Touring Mumbai

As already mentioned in my previous post we've done quite a tour around the city yesterday and I thought I'd give you a short overview of the places we've been to. In order to to give you also a bit of a geographical perspective I've create a map with the major places we visited.

View Mumbai Tour in a larger map

• We started the day in Bandra where we went to Barista for a quick breakfast with coffee and tea respectively.
• We then proceeded to one of the sights of the city, the tomb of Haji Ali (a mausoleum on a small island which is only accessible during low tide via a narrow foot path).
• Since we did that in the full mid-day heat we badly needed refreshments afterwards, so we relaxed at the SOBO Central Mall to re-hydrate ;)
• The next and probably most unusual destination was the area around Crawford Market with a fruit, vegetable, household, electronics, meat, fish and even a pet bazaar. We added the large cloth and garment bazaar, Mangaldas Market, to the itinerary before we happily made our escape towards C.S.T station. The biggest religious festval in India, Diwali (festival of lights) is coming up in 10 days and everyone is at least in as a big shopping mood as people in Europe are before christmas so the amounts of people who were out in the streets shopping were just incredible.
• Apparently this shopping mood was quite contageous and we did our part of in the Bombay Store and enjoyed the remainder of the evening enjoying the Arabian Sea sea breeze at Marine Drive.

Today, before continuing the 'shopping experience" in one of the large malls in South Mumbai we made a short stop-over at Dhobi Ghat - a large washing area where local Dhobis (=people who wash clothes) manually wash the clothes that have previously been collected for cleaning from hotels, hospitals as well as private houesholds. It's also known as the world's largest 'outdoor laundry' and such a must-see that we even have whole tourist buses stopping by for a quick photo-shoot.

Not leaving his readers without some pictures of this curiosity...
Memonji