Amazing Mumbai

After a succesfull presentation at work, I got some days off and went to Mumbai with my flatmate Faith. After 18 hrs of busride later we arrived to Mumbai and almost immediatly started our sightseeing. We visited the elephanta island, a unesco world heritage site located one hour from the mainland, and home to cave temples build in the 6th century. The trip to the island was an amazing experience and the temples were truely amazing. The first and the biggest of them is a Shiva temple, containing the most detailed carvings and sculptures. It was really amazing and diificult to understand that these things where made 1000 of years ago. On the boatride back to the city we got the perfect view of the gateway of India, a monument build to celebrate the landing of the british royalities in 1911. Next to the Gateway of India is the Taj Mahal hotel, probably the most famous and most expensive hotel in India. The story tells that the hotel was build by Jamsedji Tata after he was denied acess to at that time the biggest hotel due to the colour of his skin. As a result he builded the biggest and most extravagant hotel in India, which now is one of the famous landmarks of Mumbai and India. We went in there afterwards, just to have a look, and the architecture that meet us was truely amazing. The hotel contains over 500 rooms, 8 restaurants i think, the most expensive shops and the most amazing halls, stairs, etc. Even at the toilet, one lady opened the water for you and dried your hands.. We went in there for a cup of tea, just to tell people that we had a cup of tea at the taj 🙂 Besides the Taj Mahal hotel, Mumbai houses several impressive buildings. Even though they all need some painting, it was amazing just wandering around the streets of Mumbai where the architecture is a mixture of gothic, victorian, and several other styles. Victoria station, the biggest train station in Asia and also a unesco world heritage site, is just one example of the great architecture that meets you in Mumbai.Besides architectural wonders, Mumbai houses the biggest slum in Asia, the Dharavi slum, where the movie slumdog millionaire is casted. We took the train the the station where the slum starts and got a nice overview of the houses and the area but didnt went in there, when we couldnt quite figure out how we felt about slum tours. The Dharavi slum is about 1.75 sqkm and holds around 1 mio residents. Most of them have electricitry, water and pays rent and the slum holds business ranging from potteries to plastic recycling. The slum has an annual turnover on 650 dollars a year.Besides sightseeing, Mumbai showed us that indian food indead can be amazing and really tasty! With prices much higher than Bangalore, we tried various of indian dishes ranging from south indian seafood to traditional north indian dishes and had some amazing food experiences. Mumbai is also a place to meet other backpackers, compared to Bangalore where everybody works, so we meet a nice group of backpackers and got stories from their travels around the country.Monday night we jumped on the bus back south again and now its back to reality and work again, but after 5 days of holiday i kinda missed it so now i’m excited about going back to the lab