Monday, January 2, 2017

Mumbai: Gateway to India and Gateway home

It is now some weeks since we were in India and made our way home. Christmas and New Year have come and gone and finally we end this chapter.
Mumbai was the traditional entry point to India for the British. For us it was the end of a few great weeks in India. We flew down from Udaipur but it is not a centre of tourism.

We visited this huge city undergoing a transition from slum to modern highrise. Today many people live in the slums but have good jobs in the areas around as they wait for their turn to receive Government highrise housing in the new developments.

Among the places that we visited were the traditional Dhobi Wallas going about their duties with the cities washing.


                              Many of the clothes are new and are sent for a wash prior to sale.

The most moving was the house frequently used by Ghandi that has been made into a museum..


It includes a series of dioramas such as this one of his funeral pyre.
"Lead me from the Unreal to the Real,
From Darkness to Light
From Death to Immortality"

We visited a Hindu Temple and tasted the delicious sweets.


Two weeks away and we didn't even open the pack of Immodium.

You know that the locals are cricket tragics! We drove past the many colonial buildings and past huge open areas with literally hundreds of cricket games in progress.


                                               They seemed to manage the narrow strips!


                                                               Mumbai Town Hall.


                                                                Victoria Station.


                                              Gail at the Raj Hotel.


                                                 We pose in front of "The Gateway to India"
This was built for the arrival of The Prince of Wales..King Edward VII. He and the troops marched through the gate. Not much later the British troops marched out of the gate as they exited India.
We had to catch a domestic flight back to New Delhi to connect with our flight home