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Album: By Country | By Date India | April 2001 < Prev: Saqqarah | Next: Kochi >
Travelogue: By Country | By Date India | April 2001  

April 2001 - Bombay, now known officially as Mumbai

A much more interesting and easy city than we expected

Sleeping on the 2AM flight to Bombay Lovely carving on a building serves as an elegant headboard for the people sleeping on the sidewalk beneath it. Marigold blossoms decorating the gates of Horniman Circle for a benefit. This is where the Bombay Stock Exchange got started under a banyan tree. Kids playing cricket. A sight one sees everywhere.
A toy library bus Gateway of India. Behind it is Mumbai Harbor. It was opened in 1924 to commemorate an 1911 visit of King George V. The area around the arch fills up with Indian tourists and locals and the food and gee gaw sellers that cater to them all. Statue of Swami Vivekananda. Hindu spiritual leader and reformer who attempted to combine Indian spirituality with Western material progress, maintaining that the two supplemented and complemented one another. Henna "tattoos" - one of the things for sale around the arch. Applied with stamps.
What the Arch looks like most of the time. Taj Mahal Hotel built in 1903 by the Parsi industrialist JN Tata, supposedly after being refused entry to a european hotel. JN was the founder of what became India's largest industrial aggregation. In 1991, the Tata family controlled more than 80 companies that the empire comprised generated approximately $4 billion annually. We see the name everywhere. Maggie getting a haircut. Maggie vegging out with Scooby Doo at the Hotel Residency.
Maggie watching people in the park near Gateway of India Looking down Dr. D Naoroji Road to Victoria Terminus. It was designed by Frederick Stevens as the headquarters of the Great Indian Railway Compnay and completed in 1887. A collection of gothic peacocks, gargoyles, monkeys, lions, buttresses, domes, turrets, and stained glass windows. Inside, it is Bombay's central railway station and home to a delightful pandemonium. People sit on the floor to wait for their trains, so we felt right at home. Outside are all sorts of food stands. Some sell incredible collections of carved fresh fruit for around 36 cents. In our "compartment" on the train to Cochi. The curtain, rather than a door, separated the compartment from the aisle. Slightly less private but more comfortable than the sleeping quarters on French and Italian trains.