Chapter Two: We Arrive in India: Mumbai

    As our departure date approached, I continued working away at an ever-lengthening “to do” list.  There were technical clothes and gear to purchase and break in.  There were visas to obtain for both countries.  Rob asked me to get a 10-year visa for India as he intends for us to return in the future.  Nepal grants a 90-day Tourist Visa at the blink of an eye.  At the time, I didn’t understand why that would be necessary.  Now I do.

    For some reason I couldn’t name, I felt extremely uneasy about the trip, especially the Indian segment.  We would be shepherded around India via private cars and English-speaking guides for ten days.  We would be meeting up with some of Rob’s former Pfizer colleagues, and we would stay two nights with an Indian friend who also has a home in Connecticut. I prayed a lot about this trip. Surely we would be well cared-for. Friends of ours had just returned from a two-week trip to many of the same sites, using the same Indian travel agency, and had had a wonderful time.  What was there to be afraid of?

   We drove our car to the Toronto airport, stored it in a long-term lot, and began our long, long journey to the other side of the world.  The flight East to Mumbai was almost 15 hours in length. Mercifully, we are small people and fit into the Economy seats more or less comfortably.  Air Canada provided large enough seats for us to move around in, and three hot meals of Indian food.

   We arrived late at night and settled in to our first hotel, the Sun ‘n Surf Hotel, located right on a beach north of Mumbai Center on the Arabian Sea. 

 I was startled to see armed soldiers posted on our floor by the elevators.  I assumed they were there for our protection.  We had a good sleep before leaving the next morning for our first sight-seeing day.

   Our driver Hussein picked us up at our hotel, then picked up Andrea, a good friend and one of Rob’s former Pfizer colleagues who lives and works in Mumbai.  Our first stop was a Hare Krishna Temple.  

Our second stop was the Dhobi Ghat, a huge open-air Laundromat where the term “stone-washed jeans” must have originated.  There were hundreds of workers washing clothes and slamming them on stones before hanging them up to dry.

   From the Gate of India, a huge archway built of stone built by the British, we took a one-hour boat ride across the Bay of Mumbai to the City of Caves Island to see the Elephanta Caves and their antiquities.  This is one of many UNESCO World Heritage Sites that we visited. The caves were all carved of one massive stone, and shelter statues and stone reliefs of the various incarnations of Shiva, dating to 700 A.D.   The stone sculptures show the syncretism of Hindu and Buddhist ideas and iconography. The main temples are set in a mandala pattern.  The carvings narrate Hindu mythology with the largest being Tri Murti Sadashiva (three-faced Shiva), Nataraja (Lord of the Dance), and Yogishavra (Lord of Yoga).  

It was a long climb up many steps to the temples, past numerous stalls of incense, statues, fruits, singing bowls, and other tempting treasures.  Wild monkeys walked freely among the people, and sacred cows planted themselves wherever they wished.

   After an hour boat ride back to the mainland, we visited the Gate of India and the magnificent Taj Hotel of Mumbai.  

There, we had a buffet lunch, followed by a walk through the public sections of the hotel where there are memorials to the dozens of people killed during the terror attacks at the hotel in 2008.  The hotel is fully restored to its original grandeur, but now has many security measures in place to prevent another such tragedy.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but those terror attacks were India’s 9/11.  We later walked past the café where the shootings began, and again gave silent honor to those who perished in that terrible event.

   We drove to Malabar Hill to see and walk around the Hanging Gardens.  Upon returning to the Sun’n Surf Hotel, Rob and I took a walk around the beautiful, serene beachfront property – in part to dispel the darkness of the remembrances of the dead from 2008.  We ended our day by processing what we had experienced through the five senses:  What did we see today?  What did we touch today?  What did we smell today?  What did we hear today?  What did we taste today?  It is said that India is an assault on the senses.  Indeed, as we processed each day’s experiences this way, there were multiple choices for each of the senses.  On just this first day I saw beautiful saris, heard exuberant bands playing for wedding receptions, tasted spices, smelled gardenias, and touched stone sculptures.  It was overwhelming.  We made a practice of doing this every day.