Mombai, India. Formerly Bombay

Mumbai

What a contrast it is from Chennai on the East coast of India to Mumbai on the West.
Mumbai has the feel of a modern city with comfortably moving traffic. In fact the ubiquitous little put-puts are not permitted in the city center. The city looks out onto the Arabian Sea over a long sweep of beach that is hardly used. We were told the locals don’t like the sun but I it also looked polluted.

We were only in Mumbai overnight. We had to change planes there and I thought we might as well get a better glimpse of the city so we stayed one night. At first it seemed as though time had stood still in Mumbai because so many of the cars were 1950s models. After the British left the factories simply did not re-tool and kept rolling out the same remodel. The Ambassador is favored by the elite because it is large and comfortable and all the taxis are that model. There are 65,000 taxis rumbling around Mumbai.

We paid a short visit to the Crawforn Market. India produces over three million tons of spices a year and I was in the right place for some. I bought whole nutmegs so we can grate the fresh spice into our eggnog next Christmas. It never had occurred to me that there were so many varieties of anees seeds.

There are some fine buildings built by the British at the turn of the last century from university buildings to the police headquarters.

I failed to get a good picture of Victoria Station. It is one of British’s finest structures in Mumbai, complete with gargoyles that spout water in when it rains. It is a beautiful and practical structure that exceeds any of the counterparts I have seen in the UK. This was the heart of British India and the rail system they built across the country linking the various kingdoms. It is a building to be proud of and it is from there that the first train ran in India. Unfortunately the train service is no longer very good and about ten people loose their lives each day either falling off the roves, falling out of over-crowded carriages where they have been hanging on bulging out, or walking along the tracks. But India does run a lot of trains and are the largest employer in the world.

Mumbai is the known as Bollywood, and adaption of the old name Bombai and Holywood. They make over a thousand movies a year here but as I was not invited to be part of one we decided to visit one of the beautiful Jain temples. The Jain are an offshoot from the Hindu religion.

Our visit coincided with a ceremony that involved two bells being rung in unison and a dish of flames being moved in circles around one of the prophets. In most Jain temples they don’t mind if you take photographs but don’t like it if you turn your back on the prophets.

Instead of numerous Hindu gods they have twenty-four prophets. Another distinction from a Hindu temple is that the Hindu decorate the outside of their buildings profusely whereas the Jain embellish the interior. We were to see magnificent examples of Jain temples all over Rajasthan. The Jain are strict vegetarians and go to the extreme of covering their mouths when close to an alter so an not to destroy any living organisms by inhaling them. The strict adherents do not eat root vegetables as that would destroy the plant. It is important that they wear new cloths when they go to worship, ones that have not be soiled by such events as a trip to the bathroom and menstruating women are not allowed in the temples.

Dhobi Ghat was an interesting contrast to the pristine temple.

This is where people and the smaller hotels have their clothes washed. It is a commercial laundry location and the dirt is simply pounded out.

The work is all done by men and each has a couple of troughs of water and can be seen using plenty of muscle to beat the dirt out. It is all done by hand.

And I thought my washing machine was rough on my clothes.

From Mumbai we flew to the Royal State of Rajasthan