2 Days in Mumbai!

Preface:  Well, I had planned to put Petra (Jordan) up next, however, after spending better than a day in Mumbai, decided to post it while I still remembered some of my thoughts.

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Arriving in Mumbai, we looked out from our balcony to see the terminal building.  Being in a rather tattered state, it certainly didn't set high expectations for the city!

Off the boat and waiting to get through immigration.  India officials had come on board for face-to-face immigration check.  Regent had given us our passports back along with a copy of the main page and a "Landing Card".  India officials stamped the landing card and the passport and gave them back to us.  When we got inside the terminal, guards checked our passport copies against the landing card and if they matched, sent us on our way.  But, as you can see from the line, it was a lengthy process.  Folks were backed up all the way to the gangplank, ur uh, make that gangway!!

At least two places in town for crew members to access free WiFi!  Pictures were taken from a moving bus, thus are a bit off center.

Our first stop was at the Gateway of India.  It was quite impressive however, hard to get a picture of because the morning sun was behind it.  The entrance is on the other side, the water side and thus we couldn't get an image of the whole gate without getting out on the water.  NOT going to do that!

The inscription at the top on the back side tells the story of its building.  India was first ruled by Portugal then it became part of the British Empire from the mid-1800's until 1947.

A bit of the front side.  Getting the whole structure would have involved getting in the water, not something I wanted to do in an area where the water is so polluted, the natives won't even get in it!

A group of young folks learning and chanting about Indian patriotism.  The young man with the "white" hair represents Mahatma Ghandi, the man who led the movement for Indian independence in 1947. 

The Taj Mahal Palace hotel and tower.  The hotel was built during the British Empire days.  It opened in 1903.  The tower was built more recently, after the independence, opening in 1973.

Below is another building in the Gateway area that certainly is reminiscent of the colonial days.

Some of the often seen happy murals/graffiti on walls around the city.

Continuing our drive, we passed a waiting ambulance (below).  The attendant looks totally disinterested.  There were other emergency vehicles around so something must have happened.

One of the many buildings that has been abandoned and left to ruins.

Driving by the sea, the Arabian Sea portion of the Indian Ocean.  A young couple is sitting on the wall just like young folks do everywhere… a little courting going on!?!!  In this picture, you can see how smoggy the air is.  It is close to the levels we experienced in Beijing a couple of years ago.

Continuing our drive, we spot our first street cow.  Cows are sacred in India so you might see them anywhere!

One of the many city buses.  Note the open windows!  There is no air conditioning.  This day, the temperature reached 95°F and, the humidity must have reached 90%!  The nice thing about the high humidity, my skin looked 10 years younger!

Many of the buildings built in the colonial days had covered sidewalks to protect from the extreme beams of the sun and, in monsoon season, to protect from the rain.

Dhobi Ghat, the outdoor laundry, the largest in the world, where many hotels and hospitals send their linens for washing.  Laundry done here costs only a percentage of what it costs in a traditional modern laundry.  Clothing is flogged on the stone then hung to dry.  Guess where stone washed jeans came from!!  

Hanging things to dry does not involve clothespins!  The items are slipped between twists in the line.  When dry, it's easy to, with a quick snap, to remove the now clean and dry laundry.

Back on the bus, we look out to see the cutest little girl giving us a coquettish look through the barricade bars.  She, her mother and brother were living/selling goods next were the buses stopped on the railway flyover bridge.

Just one of the MANY street vendors that inundated us everytime we got off the bus.  This one was selling little handbags. 

Antilla in Mumbai is said to be, at over $1 billion to build, the most expensive single family home in the world. It takes a staff of 600 to maintain it.  The family owns 30 cars which all park in the building, there's space for 168!  The least expensive car is a Lexus!  Tough life!  Note the slum buildings just in front of the home.  It surprised us that the owner, Mukesh Ambani, didn't select property with a better view!

Traffic was perhaps the worst we've seen in all our travels.  It was so crowded and packed, even scooters had trouble getting through.  We were quite late getting back to the ship!

And, sometimes they put the cart before the ox!

Next stop, Mani Bhavan, the Mahatma Ghandi Sangrahalaya (Museum). This was Ghandi's headquarters for about 17 years. The museum houses Ghandi's study library, a statue of Ghandi, in numerous photos and newspaper clippings and, most importantly, clean WC's!!

Tom went with the guide and other passengers to the inside of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, previously known as the Prince of Wales Museum, primarily to find a "WC". 

I stayed on the bus in the cool air and watched the street vendors!  I was amused at the fact that many had their wares displayed on the sidewalk in from of the "sulabh", the local word for "WC"!  Having been to a couple of such places, I felt sure Tom made a wise decision!

In this photo, the guy on the left was selling toys that from a distance looked like the "Made in China" type!  The guy on the right was selling what looked like a pile of rags.  It turned out it was a heap of polo shirts!  Time to get new glasses!!

This vendor selling women's apparel attracted a woman and what looked like might be her daughters.  She must have bargained with him for half an hour or so.  She bought several of the tops and probably paid less than half what he was originally asking!  A way of shopping in India!

We had planned to go out for an evening tour, Bombay/Mumbai by lights, but after a long sweltering day in heavy traffic and seeing the smog getting worse we turned in our tickets and stayed on board! We learned later we made a couple of people quite happy! There was quite a wait list for that tour!

Day 2, we had planned to stay on board and we did just that!  One day and one outing in Mumbai was plenty!

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Petra - Most Anticipated Excursion!!!

The ship arrived in Aqaba, Jordan around 5am, our excursion was due to depart for Ancient Petra at 6am thus, we were up around 4:30am to have time for breakfast and get our "stuff" together before the loooooong drive to Petra.  It was a little over 2 hours!

By the time we had breakfast, the gangplank was down and the buses were all prepped and waiting close by!

By shortly after 6am, we were on our way.  It was obvious from the beginning that it would be a long winding drive.  If we could have gone as the crow flies, it might have been ⅓  to ½ the distance.  The road in front of us is visible as it winds around the hill on the left side of the photo.

The land itself is quite dry and has wadis all along the way.  Note: We learned that a wadi is a dry riverbed that only has water during the heavy rainy season.  Piles of rocks in spots along the way piqued the imagination, thinking perhaps they'd been part of a nomadic camp.

The landscape was nothing like we had expected, actually I don't think either of us had given it much thought.  The sharply peaked rock outcroppings were the surprise!  Hmmm, maybe we were expecting to see the kind of desert of somewhat rolling hill sand dunes we'd seen in Egypt.

This picture was taken in the area of Wadi Rhum of Lawrence of Arabia fame!

And then we arrived in Petra.  Just outside the gate is the city of Wadi Musa with hotels, restaurants and other infrastructure to support the ever-growing number of tourists who come to see the ancient city.

Our guide gave us tickets and we were on our way through the gate.  Note the price of the ticket:  50.00 Jordanian Dinar!  That's about $70 USD!  Now we know part of why this was a premium excursion, i.e., one we had to pay for!

Just inside the gate were the much needed "WC"s and of course a whole bunch of gift shops!

Not really wanting to shop, we headed on down the road to the ancient Nabataean city of Petra. The only problem with walking down hill to start the trip, we had to walk uphill in a much warmer part of the day and more tired than when we started out!

Yes, the guy on the right wearing the red backpack is Tom!  We had the option of, at our own expense, taking a horse or a horse drawn carriage for the trek but instead chose to walk it.

One of the horse drawn carriages.  The carriage has space for a driver and two passengers. 

Fortunately, this section of the path is divided lanes, one for animals and animal driven vehicles and one for walkers; the walkers didn't have to "keep looking down"!

One of the many benefits of walking was the ability to take photos and just absorb some of what we were seeing.  In the photo of the carriage, above the carriage, you can see the Obelisk Tomb that held 4 bodies in the top half, one behind each obelisk.  The lower half, almost at "street" level, was a dining room (triclinium) for family making a formal visit to the tomb. The folks in the carriage probably did not see it at all because of the way the carriage cover came over them.

This photo shows a small number of the tombs built outside the city.  Our guide explained all of this to us as we went along.

Continuing on our way, we soon come to the entrance of the Siq, a crack in the mountain that will lead us down to our destination.  

Just before the entrance is a wall that was built to keep water from running down through the siq and into Petra.  I either heard or read somewhere that the Nabataeans dug the cave to get water to Petra in a controlled fashion.



And, into the siq we go! Notice the channel along the left wall of the siq. At one time it was covered, however, ancient floods washed away the cover stones.

Tom standing next to the wall helps give it a height perspective.  The height of the walls range from about 300 to as much as 600 feet high, or roughly 30 to 60 story buildings!

The siq / canyon gets quite narrow in places, then it spreads out. And it does this over and over again.  I guess it was a combination of the earthquake that split it and the flood erosion that followed! 

At a wide spot in the siq, we can see some of the old cobblestones of the original road / path to Petra.

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And then the moment we'd been waiting for!  We round a bend in the path and there before our eyes was the The Treasury at Petra (Al Khazneh) in all its glory!  A photo just cannot show the magnitude of the size and beauty!

As we came out of the siq, the full structure came into view.  It is indeed as magnificent as we had imagined based on the pictures we'd seen over the years.  It was well worth the hour's walk to get here!

Tom standing in front of the colossal columns of the Treasury.  I wonder why they built things so big in those days.  The people were quite a bit smaller.

Note the wire mesh right behind where Tom is standing. Curiosity got the best of me.  A peek through the mesh revealed another structure.  A little research, thank you Google, says these doors were the original first floor of the Treasury structure.  The plaza in front was all filled in up to the current plaza level from erosion and debris over the years of disuse.

Opposite the Treasury is a gift shop, the only one in that area, all the others are up at the entrance. Note the free WiFi!  We had no WiFi capable devices with us so did not use it!  We didn't buy any souvenirs either as we knew we'd have to carry the extra weight back up the hill to the top!!

Off to the left side of the Treasury were some other ancient ruins.  Our guide had left us to explore on our own so I never found out their purpose.

Looking toward the right side, there is a huge cave cut out a ways up the wall.  Two guys have clamored up the steps to see what's inside.

The main part of Petra is on down through the opening next to the cave.  This is known as "the Street of Facades" which is lined with large impressive tombs.  The tombs have large false fronts (facades).   No pictures, we didn't walk down that way.

Being as we knew we had to walk the path back up to the entrance to the park and knowing it would be hot in the open sun, we did not walk down to Petra proper. Some folks took donkeys or camels but we chose to head back to the top.

One last look at the Treasury before we head out.

Back up at the top!  It took just over an hour to walk down and about an hour and 20 minutes to walk back up!  My guess is that the walk was a little over two miles each way!

It was HOT, pushing 2pm and we'd not eaten since 5:30am so we headed straight to the hotel where our lunch was being served.

After lunch we headed out to the patio in front of the hotel. There we found the hotel bar.  We reckoned it to have been built to look like the surrounding area, a la Disney, only to find out it really was a 2000 year old Nabataean tomb that had been converted to a bar!

The manager invited us in for a look-see even though they weren't open yet.  Trip Advisor folks say it it a hopping place at night!  Along the sides of the main area, there are several burial niches that offer more private space for a couple or a small group.

Even the bar itself was carved into the stone!






As we headed back outside, we noticed the hookahs lined up near the door.  It wasn't clear what folks here smoke!

Back outside, we noticed another seating area fitted into a burial chamber.  Being in the rock kept it fairly cool so we "parked" there until our guide started rounding us up to head back to Aqaba and our current home.
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Back on the bus we look back on Wadi-Musa and the mountains that house the places we have just visited.  The long shadows of the late afternoon sun make it look nice and inviting.

As the time wore on, Tom chose to nap, I chose to watch the sunset for as long as it lasted!

Whew!  That was a long one!!  Have to head down to the Internet Cafe to be able to post it!  They have a much better connection than we do here in our cabin!

rf