The main thing I noticed about Bombay (or Mumbai) is its energy; it is completely alive, very vibrant. We had to do the immigration formalities again; we might have been landing in India for the first time instead of two days earlier. There were two tours that I wanted to take: Elephanta Caves and Panoramic Mumbai. Unfortunately, because state-run sites and museums in Maharashtra State close Mondays, both tours were offered only on our first day (Sunday). However, there was an hour and a half to two hours between when the first tour should return and the second tour started, so I figured I had plenty of slack time. As it turned out, the first tour was WAY late getting back through a complete comedy of errors (a perfect example of Murphy's Law in action). First, one person didn’t get back to the group at the appointed time, so we were late catching the boat back to the mainland, and then the bus that was supposed to meet us and take us back to the ship wasn’t there. Our guide kept calling and calling to find out where the bus was, but not getting any answer. Several of us were in the same predicament (needing to meet another tour); what we should have done when the bus wasn’t there was go back to the ship on our own by taxi, but some people had left stuff on the bus, and we would have had to pay for the taxi. So I kept calling David to update him on our status. The tour company finally sent a substitute bus while they tried to find our bus driver and his bus, and David met me on the pier with my second ticket and a fresh bottle of water, and away I went. The security guards were quite amused at checking me in to the pier and then checking me out again maybe two minutes later. They decided I must really like India.

The second day (half day, really – we sailed at 1:30) I only shopped on the pier at the shops set up there (more on that later), so I have decided to describe the morning tour on this day, and the afternoon tour for tomorrow.

We boarded the bus at the pier and drove through downtown Bombay. (The guide in Cochin had continuously referred to "Bombay", so one of the women on our tour asked him if we should say Mumbai or Bombay. He said in Cochin everyone understood it as Bombay, but when we were there we should probably say Mumbai, because people preferred that. However, nearly everyone we had contact with had great difficulty remembering Mumbai and slipped back into calling it Bombay after a couple of minutes. So much for name changes.)

Our first stop was a photo opportunity at the central Victoria Station train station, a magnificent example of overblown Victorian architecture. It has everything: size, intricate details, opulence. It also handles forty percent of Bombay’s daily commuter traffic, or five million passengers twice a day. After that, we went to Gateway of India, which is near another major landmark, the Taj Palace Hotel. Our guide told us that the Taj Palace Hotel was built by Mr. Tata (an early Indian rich guy)as a luxury hotel for all, especially native Indians, because he got incensed at the English hotels that didn’t allow natives or dogs. The Gateway is also a major boat landing, and that was where we boarded our boat to Elephanta Island. The boarding was kind of interesting: there are not enough berths for all the boats around the landing, so one boat ties up and up to six others tie up to the outer boat instead of the landing. We had to walk through the boat closest to the landing to get to ours. Coming back, we walked through five boats to get to the landing.

Elephanta Island is an amazing experience. There is a cute little train to take visitors from the boat landing to the entrance to the cave area. I say cave area because you have to walk up 110 steps to get to the caves, through dozens of vendor stalls selling almost anything you might want; there are even vendors doing food preparation on small barbecues. There are sedan chairs (for an extra fee), but most people walk up the steps. These are not stairs really, because the steps are not even widths (although they are fairly even heights). There may be ten feet between steps, then six feet, then four steps together, and so on. The general trend is up; the caves are a couple of hundred meters higher than the boat landing. I estimate it is about a mile up. Along the way, you see the vendors, but also the wild monkeys of Elephanta Island. Our guide warned us about these monkeys: they are cute, but if you are holding something that looks like it might be food, and they want it, they can get very testy and even bite if you don’t let them have it. One woman on the ship told us that there is a monkey somewhere on the island taking pictures with her compact camera – she had left the top of her backpack partly open and the monkey saw her camera and grabbed it and took off with it.

The Portuguese discovered these caves in the seventeenth century and named the island for the stone elephant they found on the shore (possibly a statue of Ganesh). Unfortunately, they also used the caves for target practice, so all of the statues and wall carvings are damaged. The guide explained that scholars can know which gods are being portrayed because each god has a specific weapon and transport, so that is often the only way to identify the god. An interesting side note: the guide explained that it would usually be obligatory to remove our shoes before entering a temple, but all the images are damaged, and Hindus do not believe in worshipping damaged images, so we did not have to remove our shoes, since the site is no longer holy. I could write a lot of words about what is in the cave, but I think I will let the pictures tell the story. Just be aware that the pictures are only a small sample of what the caves contain, and it is all impressive.