Mumbai - November 3rd

We do manage to get up a bit earlier this morning, although still not as early as planned due to a miss-set phone alarm.  We have worked out a plan to make half our commute easier, Dorota gets one of the women only carriages.  We saw a news item last night in the hotel which showed what a problem it is for women here, two men were killed trying to intervene in a case of sexual harassment on the street.

We arrive at the Gateway of India for our trip to Elephanta island.  It’s a one hour boat journey, although they must only start the clock when the boat finishes dropping off supplies to others in the harbour, as it takes about 10 minutes longer.  The island itself is home to some caves which were used as Hindu temples and have carvings of a number of the various deities in them.  We fend off all the guides offering their services, as it’s not hard to find our way there.  Instead of the steps through a jungle which we were told by the ‘guides’, we have a tunnel of junk sellers to guide us to the gate.

The caves themselves are OK. They are cool, it being quite hot now at the middle of the day, and you can see the carvings were quite intricate at some point.  Unfortunately vandalism, some of it by the Portuguese, has taken its toll, but the main 3 headed Shiva statue is very impressive.  Reading our guidebook and walking around takes a couple of hours, and then we go back towards the boat, stopping off for a mango lassi and some barbequed corn on the cob.

Once back in Mumbai again we walk a few of the other streets that we didn’t walk the previous day back towards the train station.  With CST and Elephanta we get two UNESCO world heritage sites in one day, which isn’t something you get too often.  Despite us just beating rush hour, the train station and our train back is very full, but we get back to our hotel early, popping out for another quick bite to eat, before we prepare to move on to Goa in the morning.