Wednesday, May 18 - Elephanta Caves

Mumbai welcomed us home to the Young Womens Christian Association (YWCA) Hostel for another night. In the morning we took a ferry from the Mumbai mainland to an island about an hour away, the home of the Elephanta Caves. Upon our arrival on the island we took this little choo choo train into the main area. Apparently, Elephanta Caves got their name because of a giant elephant statue that used to be on the island until it was stolen by the Portuguese. Eventually India got their statue back but it actually sank in the surrounding waters. When India was able to retrieve the statue from the waters they ended up securing it an a local museum. While there were no longer elephants on the island, there were plenty of other animals- monkeys, goats, and stray dogs. There were some really freaking cute puppies on the island that I wanted to pet, but IPE warning made me make better life decisions… The monkeys were really fun to watch though as long as you didn’t have colored drinks. They really LOVE pop and juices, so they will follow you and try to get your bottle. There were caves we visited after climbing over a hundred steps in addition to the general steep gradient of the mountain. Unfortunately the caves definitely sustained significant damage to the carvings on the walls; however, there were a few of the carvings that showed little to no visible damage. It’s crazy how talented and how many man-hours worked to create these master pieces that just don’t exist in places across the US. 

Today we decided to try a different restaurant for lunch in Mumbai and went to a “tourist bar”. I say this because literally it had the largest concentration of white people in a given place I have yet seen here. Plus by looking at the menu it was clear they get a lot of foreigners because they not only had traditional Indian dishes, but there were also Chinese (or Indochinese), Italian, American, and generic bar foods. After eating at a couple actual restaurants in India, we have learned a few things—firstly, food is cheap and that doesn’t mean you won’t be full; secondly, never order a serving a rice without splitting it with AT LEAST one other individual; thirdly, Indian food is best enjoyed when you team up with a buddy or two and order dishes that appeal to all and then try some of everything. On that note, we ended up trying chicken tikka marsala, buttered chicken, vegetable curry rice, and some roti. The dishes were all good and its interesting how every place has their own twist to the spices they use and how hot/spicy the dishes come out. I was surprised how not spicy and even sweet some of the dishes were today, but then again, we were at a very touristy place (we generally go to restaurants that are more touristy or that are recommended by locals or tour guides to ensure nobody gets sick from the food since we have to be very careful about garnishments, and raw veggies if they’ve been washed in tap water). 

Around 3/3:30 we left for the airport since we had a domestic flight to New Delhi around 6pm. Fun fact, I thought I was going to be left in Mumbai for a little bit because while I gave my passport to the ticket counter it seems they forgot to issue my ticket and we had to have the gentleman guiding us through the airport ask them for my ticket again. Good news, I did get a ticket, so I was able to remain with the group! Probably the weirdest thing though about the airport, and something I’m beginning to wonder may apply to all public transportation methods in India, there are no announcements warning of planes boarding, nor mentioning the upcoming/current station the train would stop at. Additionally, at this airport there were buses that would take you from the main building out to the runway and towards sets of stairs that you’d go up to the board the plane. Since we were in India, these buses were reminiscent of the Bursley Baits buses; however, while we were packed just as tightly, the back of the bus had a very low ceiling where the steps went up so Gabi and I had to crouch so we wouldn’t hit our heads…. The plane wasn’t nearly as unexpected of an experience as the train yesterday, since it was like any normal plane just with fairly narrow seating. Surprisingly though, our tickets came with a meal of our choice on the plan so I got to try essentially Indian Ramen which was pretty good. The pilot was also pretty entertaining. He had a British accent and a very carefree attitude that would make any nervous flyers extremely concerned. For instance, some of my favorite quotes of the flight went something like this, “our plane has been delayed because it landed late, but once we are in the air our flight time will be about 1:30/1:45, it depends on traffic” and “we are about to prepare for landing, so we’ll see how this goes…”. But since I’m updating my blog, things seemed to have turned out just fine! 

This evening we actually checked into this very cute Bed and Breakfast in New Dehli (Colonel’s Retreat). Honestly, I recommend this place extremely highly! There was a huge living room area on each floor and a few bedrooms on each level and everything was furnished in a really homey style that if I ever come back to New Delhi I’d love to stay at for a few nights. Wi-fi worked really well too, good enough for Game of Thrones addicts to stream an episode to avoid spoilers, and fast enough to upload blogs with pictures and videos. Additionally, the breakfast is amazing! They had a variety of western and Indian breakfast dishes and even some wonderful platters of banana bread for the table (we were even able to ask for some banana bread to go, since we had a 6ish hour drive ahead of us).