Now it is time for a city tour. But before we can board the van, we get to stand on the sidewalk and watch the craziness streaming past us in the road. Seriously worth the price of admission.
Back in the van, we make a circular route through some areas with fascinating architecture. I never imagined the city to be so beautiful with so many different architectural styles from modern to colonial to renaissance – all somehow strung together in some cohesive fashion.
A short while later, we arrive at the Ghandi museum where we spend about 45 minutes wandering through the displays. Of course the girls’ first stop is the restroom, because we know better than to wait! It’s sort of a miniature treasure hunt to find it, the signs are really confusing, but we finally reach our destination on the top floor at the back of the building. We’re lucky as we are the first one’s in and there is no line. Phew. Now we can tour.
The museum is done quite well. The second floor consists of about 30 “mini-figure tableaux” that detail Ghandi’s life. They are really well done and very realistic.
Some of the more important events in his life are also displayed through photos at the front part of the house, including a montage of his iconic portraits, and some great bas relief pieces.
The room where he lived is also preserved at the top of the stairs, and you can walk out onto the terrace where he used to sleep and say his prayers – and where he was eventually arrested.
The house itself belonged to a great friend of Gandhi, who donated it to the people as a research institute for all things Gandhi, and as a memorial to Gandhi and his followers and devotees. And as such, the lower level houses a huge library filled with reference and lending sections and is available for all who wish to learn about the Father of the Nation.
It’s a really great museum, but it is also a really small museum, and as we turn to leave, we see streams of people filing in – mostly from ship tours. The bathroom line is ridiculous and more and more people are crowding the stairwells and the museum space. We had great timing and are very happy to be done with our visit before these hordes descend.
We tour around a little more, taking in all the sights and trying to absorb the mass humanity that lives here – 30,000 people in 1 square KM. That’s a little too much to even comprehend.
Our next stop is the oldest place in Mumbai – a water pool where people go to drink and/or wash in the water in order to live a long life. It is surrounded by temples and to get to the pool we have to take a winding, sloping walkway through old tenements and shops then down some big deep stairs which open out onto the pool.
There are kids playing the in the pool and women washing their clothes. There is a continuous stream of clean, clear water that is always running into this pool, which is the source of long life. We all take turns washing our hands in the water while Edward plays photographer with all our cameras/phones (and even though it looks like that green hose is what is filling up the trough with water – the hose is actually there to suction the water out and over to the ladies washing their clothes – honest!).
The weird thing here is that you can’t see the temples that surround the pool. They’ve built all around them, so you only get little glimpses of them as we walk up and out back to the street.
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