Ron and Sally Jo Blog

Flew to Mumbai for our last two days and stayed in a plush hotel.  We took two major bus tours to see the city.  It is another bustling city with beautiful British colonial architecture and the second largest slum area in Asia.  Contrasts.  Mumbai was seven swampy islands which are now connected by bridges and concrete.  It used to be known as Bombay (Portuguese “Bom Bahia” or Good Bay).  The name as reverted to Mumbai (Mumba-Ai “Mother Mumbai”) the eight-armed goddess worshiped by the fishermen, the original inhabitants.

Stopped at another Dhobi where laundry is done.  A larger area than Cochin.  Laundry men/women receive 5 rupee (8 cents)/piece of clothing.

Stopped briefly at Mumbai’s most famous landmark, Gateway of India.  It was getting towards night so didn’t see it close.  The Gateway was where  British governors and other prominent people landed.  Close by was the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel where the 2008 bombing occurred.

Visited the Victoria Terminus Railway Station, Victorian Gothic architecture.  It was named for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.  Over 1,000 trains and two million passengers pass through the station daily.

Stopped at a flower market.

Several days before, the Indian Prime Minister announced one night that as of the next morning 500 and 1000 rupee notes were no longer accepted. (65 rupees = $1) He was trying to weed out “black money” and counterfeit money.  People had 10 days in which they could exchange the old notes for new notes.  (If interested, we could talk and explain more about this.)  We were lucky that our guide helped us exchange our notes. However, we saw lines a block long at many banks as people tried to get exchanges.  Banks ran out of notes, ATMs ran out of notes.  People couldn’t buy because businesses wouldn’t accept the old notes.  It might be compared to the U.S. saying overnight that $5 and $10 notes were no longer valid.  And India is a cash society.

We visited a home where Gandhi lived for 17 years.

We strolled through a fascinating flea market.

We found it interesting that there was beautiful British colonial architecture but our guide never stopped  to let us take photos of that.  But she did stop and told us to take photos of the slum area. She did want us to photograph the most expensive house in Mumbai – home of Mukesh Ambani ranked by Forbes as the ninth wealthiest person in the world.  Bobby Jindal is a relative.  A city of contrasts!

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2016 at 1:55 am and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.