Mumbai part 2

Day 19 Mumbai 

Dawn Princess has been operating on 3 engines since the first day from Sydney despite specialist engineers boarding in Darwin and Singapore. Due to the ship's reduced power our schedule has been altered. In some ports we are to leave or arrive a couple of hours later or earlier and in the case of Abu Dubai, the port has been dropped. In Cochin the ship arrived 2 hours later however we were still able to have our organised tour with a few modifications. In Mumbai the ship arrived an hour later and the departure was to be two hours earlier but there were a few hiccups to the planned early departure. Several busloads of passengers who travelled by air to the Taj Mahal from Cochin and re-joined the ship here were held up at the airport and didn't get back to the ship till an hour after the proposed sailing. The ship also had to wait for a shipment of technical equipment and believe it or not, someone forgot to tell the harbour pilot that the departure had been brought forward. Paul and I waited on the back deck to watch the sail away for over an hour then gave up and went to bed.  I don't know what time we sailed as we were well and truly asleep. 

Mumbai…As it is the beginning of the monsoon season we were fortunate to experience only a couple of downpours during our tour around this fascinating city. We toured the diverse sights of the former British Colony with the same group as Cochin. The Gateway of India and the sumptuous hotel, Taj Mahal Palace, both on the harbour front, were our first stop for the day.  Next stop, a fishing village virtually covered in small pieces of broken up foam and rubbish washed in from the sea. The local fisherman use a raft to paddle out to their fishing boats anchored some 200 to 300 metres from the shore. These rafts are made of pieces of white foam (used to make the cooler boxes to store broccoli), kept within netting to make what I would describe as a huge floating pillow.  Mayhem and order is what we experienced for our third stop, a visit to the Old Victoria Railway Terminus with a daily traffic of 2.5 million people. Next stop was Gandhi's House which is now dedicated to the man and his peaceful philosophy. Next we visited the Jain Temple where we had to remove hats and shoes and leather items of any kind were not allowed inside. On the way to see the Dhobis gat (open air laundry) we stopped off at the Hanging Gardens and looked in the direction of the Towers of Silence (towers where a particular religious sect place their dead to be dried by the sun and eaten by vultures). The tour included a vegetarian lunch at a' western' style restaurant. We discovered our lunch to be colourful as well as tasty with NO after effects!

Mumbai is a mass of humanity in India's extremes. From very wealthy people to overwhelming poverty. Sky scrapers to slums.  Peaceful and serene temples to the blaring horns of road vehicles. We found it to be a fascinating city full of contrasts.

India certainly puts life into perspective and makes us appreciate how very fortunate we are compared to many people in this world. Yet I felt India had a soul.