48 Hours in Mumbai, India's Bourdeuax and Holi Caves

We arrived in Mumbai just in time for Friday evening rush hour.  We jumped on the commuter train which felt like a cattle car for the hour ride into the city.  Crammed between rucksacks of goods, working men and green chillis we made our way into the bustling city center.  Finding a room that resembled a ship board cabin we went out for some dinner plate sized tandoori rotis and curries before calling it a night after our 26 hour train journey from Kerala.

The following day we spent walking around the old city, taking in the old colonial buildings as we strolled down the large leafy boulevards.  We started at the Gateway to India which stands directly in front of the iconic Taj Mahal Palace that dominates the shoreline.  Stopping for a quick breakfast of vada pav (a spicy lentil paddy on a bun) and chai we continued to wander around the historic Raj era buildings.  Around lunchtime we found ourselves at Churchgate station where Mumbai's famously efficient dabba wallahs were getting ready for their lunch runs.  Dabba wallahs deliver 200,000 lunches all over the city by way of train, bicycle and foot.  The color coded lunch boxes can change many hands from the wife or mother who makes the meal at home to the hungry office worker at the other end.  Amazingly enough, Dabba wallahs maintain a six sigma rating, only making one mistake in six million meals delivered!

After staring in awe at the dabba wallahs we made our way to some of the busy market areas that sell anything and everything under the sun.  Winding our way through the narrow alleys we made our way to Marine Drive and Girguam Chowpatty for some kulfi and belhpuri from the beach stalls.

The next day we caught a second class train to Nasik after taking a trip to fashion street where we haggled over underwear and watches.  Stopping for a fresh sugar cane juice from one of the many stalls around the city, we watched men in white play cricket in one of the large fields.  They were surprisingly bad for a country so obsessed with the sport.  Arriving at the station for our train we found a large crowd surrounding some Bollywood stars that were being filmed walking out of the station.  It was an appropriate ending to our Bombay experience.

Taking the second class train out of Mumbai was a cultural experience all in itself.  The berths were packed with people in the aisles, overflowing the seats and sitting on the upper benches with their feet dangling in the air.  Food and drink wallahs poured into the train at each station, navigating the mash of people with ease.  The wallahs would demand the attention of the passengers with a loud speech, handing out their goods and then collecting them when their spiel was over.  The train was also frequented by India's transexual community.  These rough men dressed in sarees are feared by many, who will part with their rupees to keep from being cursed and having their masculinity stolen.

Arriving in Maharastra's wine growing region around Nasik we expected a small town, but found ourselves in a bustling Indian city where we spent a couple of hours finding our way to a guesthouse with a French couple that were also shoestring travelers.  After negotiating through auto-rickshaw drivers' attempts to take us to the wrong place, hoteliers' inflated room tariffs, winding dark streets clogged with whizzing traffic, and a case of traveler's diarrhea, a group of very hospitable shopkeeps pointed us in the right direction, conferred amongst themselves, and then decided to give us a lift to a very nice and hospitable hotel.

We spent the next day wandering the town and visiting the temples around it associated with the Ramayana.  It is the place where the evil demon king Ravana's sister, Sarpanacha, espied Rama walking through the forest and fell in love with him.  She appeared as a beautiful woman to tempt the hero.  Rama's brother, Lakshmana, saw through her disguise and cut off her nose, which is Nasik in Sanskrit, to punish her for tempting the noble and betrothed Rama.  Ravana was told of this assault and flew from his palace in Lanka, modern day Sri Lanka, to steal Rama's fiancé Sita in recompense.  There are temples to mark the place of Sarpanaka's mutilation and the cave in which Sita hid from Ravana.

The next day we and the French couple took a trip out of town to Sula Vinyards, the first and largest vineyard in India.  The grounds were covered in meticulously trimmed and trellised grape vines with dry hills and sparkling blue waterways serving as a stark backdrop.  We took a tour of the production and storage facilities that ended with a tasting of a sampling of their wines.  They were very tasty and it was quite relaxing to sit back afterwards on their balcony overlooking the grounds sharing a bottle of high caliber wine.

We moved on again the next day to Aurangabad, a spread out busy city that served as our base for visiting the rock cut caves of Ellora.  Our first day there happened to be Holi, an Indian festival celebrated all over the north of the country where people cover each other with colored powder and water.  Just about every shop in town was closed up for the morning's festivities, except for the areas around the town's mosques where the Muslim residents mainly live.  The streets were lined with groups of Indian men, who would, depending on their degree of inebriation, either sedately dab your cheeks with color or smash it all over our faces and try to cop a feel of Amanda.

We made it to the town center after a couple hours walking the hot streets and only just caught a glimpse of the frenetic booze and bhang fueled mayhem when a man among the many police surrounding and containing the revelry forced us to leave, saying that women were not allowed.  It was a bit of a disappointment to be barred from the celebrations, but in light of the recent highly publicized rape cases in the country was probably the right thing to do.  Instead we hiked up to the tomb of Aurangazeb's wife, called the "Poor Man's Taj" in guide books due to its resemblance to the iconic Taj Mahal without the adornment or semiprecious stones.   It was a laugh to pose for pictures with all of the somber and uncolored domestic tourists in front of the stark white profile of the mausoleum.

After doing our best to clean the dye off, which stuck around for about a week anyway, we headed out to the Ellora Caves early the next morning.  They formed a complex of monastic retreats spanning hundreds of years and showcasing the changes in style as well as the enduring motifs associated with the region's shifting religions, starting with Buddhist monastic cells and then Hindu and Jain temples, which were defaced by Muslim conquers.  They were not only enduring examples of human ingenuity and skill, but also a compact lesson in religious shifts and the associated blending and breaks in style.

Moving on from Maharashtra the next day on a night bus was an experience, beginning with a beautiful descent from the Deccan Plateau through hills sparsely wooded with leafless trees and followed by a long night drive along the coast of Gujarat with the smoke stacks were illuminated by innumerable stars.  In the middle of the night we were woken from our bumpy sleep by the worst smell ever. Think of industrial waste, corpses, and low tide wrapped in a blanket of shit and left in the sun to putrefy.  The morning brought us to Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest city and a steaming metropolis chock full of auto-rickshaws, mosques and endless sweet Gujarati thalis.

We spent one night and a short day there walking around the pollution clogged lanes of the old town, trying to find the tourist sights through the chaos of the markets and crowds.  We found several mosques that were peaceful respites from the hustle outside their gates.  Carved from stone with many pillars in their large prayer rooms these mosques are said to be some of the most beautiful in India, but we'll get back to you on that.

We also indulged at Gopi's Dining Hall, one the "best 50 restaurants to eat at in the world", which is famous for it's sweet and endless thalis. We stuffed ourselves with hot buttered rotis, rich curries, chutneys, raitas and sweet samosas, ending with a thick and rich chilled sweet that was a meal in itself.  Waddling out of the restaurant into the hot mess of city and walking 2 miles in the 100 degree heat was brutal.  But then we had an ice cream dinner and everything was better.

Amanda floats in front of the famous Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai.

An opulent marble fountain in the center of Raj Era Bombay.

A dabbah wallah stops for a photo as he organizes the lunch boxes for his afternoon delivery.

Chettrapatti Shivaji Station, one of the most impressive British buildings in Mumbai.

Belhpuri and dahipuri from the beachside stalls in Girguan Chowpatty.  Each bite is a crunchy flavor explosion.

Amanda posing in front of some of the break waters that turned Mumbai's seven islands into one peninsula.

Wine tasting at Sula Vineyards outside of Nasik.

Colin getting pranked by the creepiest. guy. ever.

Our colors changed frequently throughout the day.  Here we stop for a break after getting kicked out of the mayhem.

Visiting the "Poor Man's Taj" in Aurangabad.  The holi colors were a nice contrast to the stark white.

Daulatabad fort outside of Aurangabad on our way to the Ellora caves.

Colin contemplating some of the freizes at the Ellora caves.

The Buddha sits meditating in a rib vaulted cave at Ellora.

Leaving the Deccan Platuea we were awarded with amazing views from our  double decker sleeper bus.  We were glad we didn't fall out of the window!

The busy streets of Ahmadabad.