Elephanta Caves ~ Unesco World Heritage

When you are in Mumbai you have to go to the Elephanta Caves and start with a boat ride from the Gateway of India and at that point you also see the majestic Taj Hotel, So you catch all 3 in 1 go!

Much before the Gateway of India was completed in 1928 to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary, Mumbai already had an equally majestic landmark. Home to the Royalty, heads of states, tycoons, captains of industry, corporate nomads and jet-setters, The Taj Mahal Palace, is a living tribute to Mumbai's cosmopolitan ethos and dynamic spirit.



In 2008 Mumbai city had fallen prey to the biggest ever terrorist operation in India. In a well-planned and synchronized manner, heavily-armed terrorists attacked 10 major landmarks in the heart of India’s financial capital on Wednesday evening. The main target of the terrorists were foreigners and policemen. The two five star hotels of the city, Taj and Oberoi, were attacked by terrorists. A sad day for India!

(this is not my picture, but the rest are)


The Gateway of India is synonymous with Mumbai. It is the most famous monument of Mumbai and is the starting point for most tourists who want to explore the city. Gateway of India is a great historical monument built during the British rule in the country. It was built as a triumphal arch to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Mumbai (then, Bombay). Gateway of India was built at Apollo Bunder, a popular meeting place.



In the past Gateway of India used to be the arrival point for visitors from the west. Ironically, when the Raj ended in 1947, this colonial symbol also became a sort of epitaph: the last of the British ships that set sail for England left from the Gateway. Today this symbol of colonialism has got Indianised, drawing droves of local tourists and citizens. This landmark of Mumbai is a must visit of the city.



After about an hour boat ride you arrive at the Elephanta Caves, but first you have to walk about a few hundred steps UP and past hundreds of tourist vendors who sell those cheapy touristy stuff... but the caves are gorgeous, so just endure!

The Elephanta caves owes its name to the enormous stone elephant found there by Portuguese navigators. This elephant was cut into pieces, removed to Mumbai and somehow put together again. It is today the melancholy guardian of Victoria Gardens Zoo in Mumbai. So no elephant to see in the caves... JJ and Jezz were searching for it (and we too, since we didn't know this info by then).

The 'City of Caves', on an island in the Sea of Oman 10K of the coast of Mumbai, contains a collection of rock art linked to the cult of Shiva. Here, Indian art has found one of its most perfect expressions, particularly the huge high reliefs in the main cave.
The date of the famous Elephanta Caves is still very much debated and varies from the 6th century to the 8th century according to different specialists. They constitute one of the most striking collections of rock-art in India. It was indeed impressive!



Auntie Charu had bought the girls some books about the mythology of India, so it was nice to see some carved rocks about the goddesses the girls had read about! The Hindu caves contain rock cut stone sculptures, representing the Shaiva Hindu sect, dedicated to the god Shiva.





The name of this sculpture is Trimurti Sadashiva and Maheshmurti. The sculpture is 20 feet (6.1 m) in height, depicts a three-headed Shiva, representing Panchamukha Shiva. The three heads are said to represent three essential aspects of Shiva — creation, protection, and destruction.





There were these cheeky monkeys all over the place, and they were really aggressive! Everywhere there were signs to NOT feed the monkeys, but still people would give them chips, cookies and all sorts of food they were eating. Because the monkeys kept following the people with food in their hands, they got so scared that they threw it to them! So a vicious circle... because that was exactly what the monkeys were after. All 4 of us were a bit scared of these dare devils, but we had no food with us, so luckily they were not after us!



And here some other 'cheeky monkeys' LOL





On the boat on the way back we were seated next to a big Indian family who just went to a wedding either that day or the day before and they were still dressed to party and the hands completely painted with fresh henna. The father of this little girl was the whole time taking pictures of ME! Yes me... I was probably the first white people in such close proximity because they kind of came from the country side... Since he was so bold to come so close with his small camera in my face, I thought I can do the same and took some beautiful shots of his little girl with the big sad eyes. So cute!!





A beautiful trip to one of the landmarks of Mumbai, go and see it if you are there!
Another great day in Mumbai...
Mireille

More Food.Fabulous Food in Mumbai

When you visit Mumbai there are a few food 'institutions' you HAVE to go to!! Really these places are maybe holes in the walls and are not the most scenic to look at.... BUT the FOOD is FABULOUS!!

The pictures are not that great of these places, that's why I collaged them... but the FOOD is just the BEST!! Trust me, go and try it when you are in Mumbai, these are the places that the insiders now, but not the tourist guides will tell you about! Only maybe the last one... Cafe Leopold and Juhu beach of course, but that is also because of the activities there.

Tucked away In a little side street on the second floor on Dadiseth Agiyari Street in the Kalbadevi area you will find Thaker Bhojanalay. Chosen as the BEST Thali restaurant in Mumbai for the consecutive years of 2007-2011.

Gujarati cuisine is in many ways unique from other culinary traditions of India. It is one of the few cultures where a majority of people are vegetarians, and a cuisine with a blend of exquisite flavours and textures. Typical Gujarati Thali (plate) consists of Rotli (wheat bread), Daal (pulses), Bhaat (rice) and Shaak (vegetables).

We LOVED it! Even the girls thought it was quite fun to dip their roti in all these little bowls and taste different flavors, most of them not spicy and vegetarian so wonderful to bring the kids!



Another great place to eat Parsi food... remember I wanted to eat from all regions of India, so before was Gujarati, now it is Parsi food that we are tasting at Britannia Cafe in the business district of Ballard Estate.

Britannia was founded by Rashid Kohinoor in 1923, the same year his son Boman, the current proprietor, was born and still walks around and helps at the restaurant at a spiffy age of 88!. He took our orders and made a small talk with the girls, they were a bit taken aback by this old man still working!! LOL
The restaurant’s most popular rice dish is made with Iranian berries and a secret ingredient passed on by Boman's wife to his younger son Romin.

From the looks of its peeling walls, chipped ceiling and old Polish furniture, the café hasn't changed much since then. But that doesn't seem to matter much to diners who dig in to Britannia's dhansak-rice (a stew of mutton and pulses), sali boti (mutton) or sali chicken cooked in a subtly sweet gravy sprinkled with crisp potato chips, and the signature dish, berry pulao.

It was very special food and I truly enjoyed having lunch there!! Definitely a place to go back to!!



A new experience for me... eating out of your car in front of this road side restaurant called Bademiya on Tulloch Road, behind Taj Mahal Hotel. Well if you can call it a restaurant, a street stall with a few tables on the side of the road, but most people are just parking there and eating in the car. The waiters serve you right there through your window... so funny, but the food is SUBLIME!! Again an old time favorite of Mumbaikars.

A visit to Mumbai simply isn't complete without trying the succulent kebabs and grilled chicken from this legendary road-side restaurant. It's some of the best street food you'll ever have! Try their mutton rolls and kebabs, simply delish!! And see how the fastest roti maker in Mumbai creates those huge rotis so fast!!





There are 2 beaches in Mumbai; Chowpatty and Juhu. You don't go to these beaches to swim but to see the action, the entertainment and families goes there in the evening to hang out with friends and have a bit to eat... street food galore! Everything you ever wanted to try you can find there. We went to Juhu beach on 1 evening and we took a look there, although WE didn't eat there, because Charu was not sure MY stomach could handle it, so the kind of food you see here, we ate at Swati, I posted about that yesterday. But if you are adventurous and you eat all the time at street stalls in India, then go to JUHU beach and enjoy all the scrumptious looking snacks and dishes!! And supposedly you can see the best sunsets on this beach, but I went already after dark...



Last but not least is Leopold Cafe on Colaba Causeway, in the Fort area of Mumbai. It was one of the first sites attacked during the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. They still have the window with the bullet holes in it. The cafe was mentioned extensively in the novel Shantaram. It's a multi-cuisine restaurant with a bar on the first level, and serves cuisines like, Indian, Western, Chinese, South American, beer and alcohol. And has 333 food items on the menu :-)

A great hang-out for the locals, so a good place to seen and be seen! Try the Chicken Tikka here.



I hope you enjoyed this food guide, and next time when you visit Mumbai, think about going to these places. You won't be disappointed!! We LOVED all of these!!

Have a foodie day!
Mireille xx

~ Food.Fabulous Food in Mumbai ~

As you know one of my reasons to go and see India was to visit my friends, but also to learn and eat more of this Fabulous Food I wanted to know more about.

I mean we all go to Indian restaurants and eat the Butter Chicken, Chicken Tikka Masala & Tandoori lamb curries, but I wanted to know MORE! The UNKNOWN recipes, and since I have read already a lot about Indian food I knew there was so much MORE!

Particular I wanted to know more about the STREET FOODS! Because this shows the culture of the country, the background of different regions... that is what I wanted to know about!!

But eating on the street for a foreigner can sometimes end up in upset stomachs, so Charu and Kavita, my friends brought me to the places where you still can eat the street food, but in a safer environment... which I totally was happy about, the good food but the more cleanliness places... BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!!

At home Charu already made us some typical breakfast dishes for us to try like the delicious Lassi drink and the yummy Aloo Puri, a puffy bread with a soupy curry with potatoes and tomatoes. And of course each household has their own recipe for this classical breakfast or snack dish. But this one was the first for us... so it will be the BEST and always be compared to the REST!
We also tried Akuri (scramled eggs Indian style with herbs, spices, tomatoes) also called egg bhurji, fried and stuffed parathas (Indian flatbread)... all so yummy!!



So one day we went to Swati Snacks, right around the corner of Charu's home, an experience in vegetarian street food and Gujarati cooking. A small place, but hugely popular, so either you make a reservation or go early to avoid the crowds! This is what we did, since early for Indian standards is normal lunch time for us, we were there around noon, still quite, but soon after it started filling up!

We had some very interesting dishes like Swati's signature dish called Panki; a banana leaf stuffed inside with ground moong dal (split green gram) and besan (gram flour) mixed with a paste of yoghurt, green chillies, fenugreek and asafoetida. It is not spicy, and therefore the tangy green chilli in the chutney complements it wonderfully.



We also had Pani Puri, it's a round, hollow puri (ball), fried crisp and filled with a mixture of water, tamarind, chili, chaat masala, potato, onion and chickpeas. It is small enough to fit completely in one's mouth. And you get this explosion of tastes... it is so yummy!

Then we had Sev Puri and Bhelpuri, which is a is a puffed rice dish with various vegetables and a tangy tamarind sauce. Just 2 different versions. The Bhel puri is with puffed rice and the Sev Puri is with small rice cakes underneath the mixture, both extremely tasty! And you have to try these dishes when you go to Mumbai!!



For the girls we ordered a Dosa. Which is a fermented crepe or pancake made from rice batter and black lentils. It has a neutral and a bit sweet taste, lovely!



As last we had Vada Pav, an unsweetened bun with a filling of finely cut green chilies and ginger and a tempering of mustard seeds and turmeric are added to a mash of boiled potatoes, and after dipping patties of the mash in an herb-seasoned batter of gram flour, the patties are deep-fried. It is typically served with a chutney which is commonly made out of shredded coconut “meat”, tamarind pulp, and garlic.



See here a clip from the restaurant, as you can see we had some of these foods and the drinks the guy recommended we had too, so refreshing! Sugar cane juice and raw mango juice (Kachi Keri)



This was just the beginning of our food adventure!!
We tried many more dishes, all so scrumptious, delicious and dishes that almost nobody knows about outside India, so I hope next time when you go to an Indian restaurant you will try something new. I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised!!

Indian cuisine is so divers and a heaven for vegetarians!!
Please share with me what your favorite Indian dish is... besides the standard dishes I mentioned at my first paragraph!

Have a lovely day,
Mireille

Shopping for jewelry... a daunting task

So one day we went out to venture and shop for an Indian outfit plus the matching jewelry that I wanted for the girls to wear on our next Xmas card. Well this is one part of the jewelry and the outfit you will see at Xmas time on our card... so I don't show more.

Isn't JJ a beautiful 'Indian' girl? We bought this piece of jewelry here at Zaveri Bazaar, the glittering gold market.



But I can tell you it was a daunting task!! We had to endure narrow dingy lanes, dust, open sewages which were definitely an eyesore. And there are no shopping malls or even a decent air-conditioned restaurants for outsiders, but no one is complaining because this has been the way of life here for generations in this Muslim area.

We knew approximately in which area we had to look for, but not exactly where or how the shops would look like, location or names... so we just had to venture out and search...

The streets in this huge bazaar area were packed with guys or better kulis who were carrying the goods from the huge trucks on the main road to the little shops in the side streets. Kulis everywhere!!





Here you see the back of the girls and my friend Charu walking through this maze of people, I was walking behind with my huge camera shooting away... look at some of the looks of the men, I don't think they were too happy me shooting them!
haha.. at that moment I didn't even notice, because my nose was behind the camera!! I only figured this out when I looked at the pictures on my computer :-)



We saw all kind of shops, but so far not any carrying any jewelry...





Then we came closer, because now on the side of the roads at the market we saw huges piles of bangles... we were at least in the right corner of this gigantic market area. But these we were not interested in...





We walked a bit more, and saw more interesting looking shops, but today no time for anything else... this outfit and jewelry already took up quite some time and the heat was sweltering... in between those buildings... no breeze, just humidity and the hot sun!!







Then we saw this stall, at first we gave it a glance but didn't think we wanted something in these plastic bags, but then the vendor showed us some more nice looking jewelry in a box. It was a complete set, and since we were already a bit tired and totally hot we decided this is our man! And Kavita our friend bought the jewelry and bangles for the girls... so nice to get as a gift! JJ and Jezz are over the moon with their sparkly jewelry and couldn't wait to try it on at home :-)



So finished with our shopping and while walking back we found another great store, a more descent (read expensive) looking store we just went in to have a final look and we bought even more jewelry, so now the girls are decked out with big bling on our next Xmas card! LOL

A little tired now and Jasmine looking back to see if I was still behind her, because I took so many pictures of this huge market area called Kalbadevi. If you ever want to go shop for anything, fabrics, jewelry, spices, plastic, kitchen utensils, go here! You can shop till you drop!



On the way out we saw this beautiful Hindu Monkey Temple.





The pink painted façade of the biggest Krishna temple in Kalbadevi – one of the city’s oldest Gujarati neighbourhoods – is known by various names: Dwarkadheesh Temple, Radheshyam Temple and Sunderbagh. But the name that brings instant recognition is the one by which the British knew it, Monkey Temple, thanks to a row of monkeys eating bananas carved on its frontage.




A very interesting but exhausting day... after this we just went home, took a shower and relaxed!

Hope you are liking my journey through Incredible India!
Mireille xx

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus ~ छत्रपती शिवाजी टर्मिनस

Mumbai has not so many historical sites as Delhi, but one of the most beautiful buildings in the city is no doubt the train station!

Formerly known as Victoria Terminus, and better known by its abbreviation CST or Bombay VT, is a historic railway station which serves as the headquarters of the Central Railways. It is one of the busiest railway stations in India, and serves Central Railway trains terminating in Mumbai as well as the Mumbai Suburban Railway.



Look at those intricate details, it is just gorgeous!!





The station was designed by Frederick William Stevens in 1887-1888. He received US$35,830.80 as payment for his services! Stevens earned the commission to construct the station after a masterpiece watercolour sketch by draughtsman Axel Haig. The final design bears some resemblance to the St Pancras railway station in London.

It took ten years to complete and was named "Victoria Terminus" in honour of the Queen and Empress Victoria; it was opened on the date of her Golden Jubilee in 1887. This famous architectural landmark in Gothic style was built as the headquarters of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway. Since then, the station came to be known as Bombay VT.

In 1996 the Minister of Railways, Suresh Kalmadi, changed the name of the station to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.



And here you only see a few people because this was taken on Holi, the national holiday. On a normal day there are so many people in this building I would not have had the opportunity to take a picture like this, it would be packed and people would push and shove to get to their train!

The Mumbai Suburban Railway system carries more than 6.9 million commuters on a daily basis. It has one of the highest passenger densities of any urban railway system in the world.



What I love are these cute little taxis that are driving to and from the train station and everywhere in Mumbai. How cute are these!



In 2008, the station was featured prominently in the Academy Award winning film, Slumdog Millionaire. And on 26 November 2008, two terrorists entered the passenger hall of the CST, opened fire and threw grenades at people. The terrorists were armed with AK-47 rifles. More than 50 people were killed in the attack! A sad day for Mumbai!!

I am not sure if I would like to take a train ride... (this picture is not mine... the rest is!)



It's a crazy and busy world out there!!
Enjoy the day!
Mireille

A cow in the street & flower garlands...

You walk around in this busy, hot and steamy city like Mumbai with over 17 million people... it is a hustling and bustling big 'town'... I can tell you that!!

And then suddenly you almost bump into... A COW! Yes, they are EVERYWHERE in the middle of the city!! Just standing there, like this is normal. Well... I guess it IS normal here in India! I mean I have seen it before on TV but when you see it in real life, in the middle of the CITY that was worth taking a picture, and I took many pictures of many cows IN THE CITY! Instead of Sex in the City they could call it Cow in the City!! LOL... patent pending... so don't steal my idea!! haha



I mean I have seen some weird animal situations, like HERE where we had zebras at the pool, but a cow in the city is as BIZARRE I think. This poor animal.. that is HOLY for the Indian population and then they have it standing there on the hard street in between the sides of a car and the zooming traffic racing by honking like mad, because that is what they DO! It's HONKING CITY! Instead of grazing on a green meadow this poor HOLY animal has a not such a holy life! But I guess if your owner has to make a living with his business making garlands or selling food on the side of the street you have to accompany him. The poor thing..

Talking about garlands... Since it was the Holi festival the first day I was in Mumbai, they were everywhere, beautiful and bright garlands, made by this handy men or women.... in a snap they are done, fresh flowers just good for 1 day. I wonder what kind of business they have when there is no need for a garland?? Or is there every day a need for a garland, like in Thailand? They hang them in cars to protect you from having an accident... I guess the law of attractions works in mysterious ways! :-)
(That's the book I just read for the book club: The Secret, about the law of attraction, so this popped up in my head).





From the look on his face I even think this man is blind, he is not looking at what he is doing... WOW!









Maybe there is a need for everyday, like if a business opens or has something to celebrate....



Or if there is a street festival? Or for temple prayers... THAT is why they need them everyday! So quite a good business... a flower garland maker :-)



I love garlands but NOT cows in the street!!
What about you?



Have a Fabulous Friday, it's April's Fools day, are you planning to trick somebody?? I told the girls to go into each other's class and pretend they were their sister... but they don't dare! haha.. these girls of mine are not such a dare devils as their mother. I always tricked my teachers!! I was such a rowdy, wild and uncontrollable kid and my daughters are just the opposite. A bit meek, shy, quite... oh well, at least they don't get as much in trouble as I did! LOL

Mireille xx