Bombay Harbor is seven miles wide at the base and tapers as it goes north. It is an impressive sight. The port of Mumbai, which shares with the port of Calcutta the distinction of being one of the two largest ports in the country, handles by far the major portion of the passenger traffic part of India’s import-export trade. With a vast and growing industrial hinterland, Mumbai is ideally situated to be the “Gateway to India” for all sea traffic from the west. The city really took off in the middle of the last century, the railway brought prosperity, textile mills were put into operation and solid Victorian buildings were erected to prove that this was an empire on which the sun never set. Land was reclaimed, mud flats and swamps were rid (comparatively speaking) of disease and Mumbai was pointed in the direction of the international glamour city it has become, though the Western visitor to this seething mass of 12 million people might find several interventions between cleanliness and Godliness. The city was called Bombay for much of the last 400 years, but Mumbai has been used in local languages for equally long. An Act of Parliament officially changed the name to Mumbai in 1997.
Across from the hotel is the Gateway of India, which is a huge archway that was built to commemorate the visit of King George V in 1911. We have been to Gandhi’s house/museum before and also the Prince Albert Museum so we skipped both this time. I stopped in a shop before heading back to the ship and made my second purchase of the trip.
Tomorrow is “India Night” where everyone wears the sari’s they bought and there’s a big party around the pool. No, I didn’t buy a sari.
It was a full day and an interesting one, but totally exhausting. We have 2 days at sea before reaching Oman and after that Dubai.
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