Bombay



Quote from the Gandhi Museum



Marine Drive

Gateway of India, built for the visit of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911

On our train ride to Mumbai, I finished reading Shantaram-an amazing 1,000 page adventure story based on the author's life in '80s Bombay. I highly recommend it- you won't get bored. It's been a great read here because it's about a foreigner experiencing and falling in love with India, having introduced me to new Marathi and Hindi words as well as Indian foods and cultures. I visited Leopold's Cafe during my stay in Mumbai the past three days, which is where the main character, Lin, hangs out often in the book.

Mumbai is a neat city and very different from Pune. It's on the coast with a nice ocean view, so we ran to Marine Drive to watch the sunset the other night. Unfortunately we missed it, but the salty smell and the cool wind was still refreshing. Mumbai also has a lot of pretty British architecture that makes you feel like you're in London. The humidity was kind of gross but the city has some western luxuries I have not experienced in 2 months...our group stayed at a hotel with real showers and regular towels ("you don't know what you got 'til it's gone..."). I also went to Theobroma, a bakery/cafe, that I could talk about for days. I ate the best brownie ever that tasted like a chocolate chip cookie and a brownie had a baby-warm, gooey, delish. I definitely saw some American food offerings during our stay that are hard to find in Pune; there is significantly more Westernization and tourism in Mumbai. I couldn't believe how many foreigners there was walking down the street; I am not used to that and I totally stared at them (in Pune when we see white people, we assume it's a student from our group). We met some students from Michigan at our hotel who were on spring break. The Westernization was even evident when we visited St. Xavier's College. All the students were wearing Western clothes, which might not be that surprising, but it's more than at the universities in Pune where it's common to wear traditional Indian clothes as well.