Goodbye Mumbai, Hello Ellora

Our last day in Mumbai could have been spent seeing more monuments and buildings or going to museums, but we were too tired of the tourist trail...

So we had lunch at Sher-E-Punjab instead, recommended by a Swiss guy we met on the train. This was when we discovered that the most famous Indian food are from Punjab. Butter Masala, naan, chicken tikka - you name it. So it wasn't hard to pick, and anyway, everything we ordered was good.

We wandered around the back streets and discovered more about every day life in Mumbai than a guidebook could tell us.

Mosque.

We also passed by a popular electronics store in Horniman Circle to replace the extension cord we got in Alleppey, the one that keeps on shooting sparks when we plug in the chargers. (We asked the vendor in Alleppey if it was made in China and he proudly said it was made in India. Not sure what to make of that...)

Had my chance to go to St. Thomas Cathedral, just in front. It's beautiful and peaceful, the walls are decorated with memorials sculpted in marble.

And the path outside is framed with tombstones of members of the British congregation.

We zig-zagged back to our hotel to wait for a friend we met in Ooty.

While waiting for him to finish work, Henri and I hung out at the art nouveau-ish Cafe Universal.

The drinks were super expensive, so even though I would have wanted another strawberry smoothie, I had to hold back.

We met up with Hatim at the train station and he asked us where we wanted to go. He wanted to invite us up at the suburbs, where we heard the food is good and the nightlife superb, but we knew we had to stay in the south because our train is at 9 and we had to be there on time. So he suggested we go to Chowpatty, arguably Mumbai's most famous beach - especially during Ganesh Visarjan, when people submerge Ganesh idols in the water.

Hatim insisted on paying for the taxi and the food and we felt like such freeloaders! But he said we are his guests and we had no choice. It was so nice to see him again, we only met by chance in Ooty during the bus tour, and we thought he and his friends were really cool.

He invited us to try three puri preparations, and they were all good! We had been planning on having some puri, but we didn' know what to ask for :)

Chowpatty beach is also famous for the street food. There are mats on the sand and you just sit there and men from the competing restaurants vie for your attention with their menu boards.

After the puri, he told us we had to try gola, an ice cream pop made of crushed ice and various syrups. The bottles look suspicious, but it was quite yummy. If I wasn't starting to get cold, I would have tried another one.

We hung out at the breakwater until 8pm just talking, and watched as the lights lit up to form "The Queen's necklace." It was a fitting farewell to loud, chaotic, beautiful, expensive Mumbai.

Hatim took us up to the train and Henri and I were off to Aurangabad. If we were a little more early in the schedule, we could have gone to Ahmedabad immediately because Ashir, Henri's university buddy in London, wanted us to be there in time for the city's famous kite festival. But there's something we had to see first, and there was no choice but to delay a few days more just to see Ellora.

It was an extremely tiring ride. We arrived at 4 am and slept at the train station. I'm sure we were not allowed to sleep at the first class lounge, but no one asked us to leave so we stayed until sunrise. It was wonderful to see the people huddled in blankets and shawls scuttling about on the platforms, some trying to keep their hands warm around a tiny cup of chai, while slowly, the sky behind them was turning golden yellow.

Henri left me at the first guest house we checked and found a better place a few streets further from the train station. We had TV and a soft bed, so when we were not paying attention to the movie playing, we were sleeping. I took the newspaper from the lobby and Henri took it from me. It felt like a weekend. Actually, it was a weekend. It felt good to have a normal weekend at last. We didn't move from there until sunset, when we started feeling hungry. 

Henri was hoping to get a beer, but lucky him, it was a "dry day" in the entire city. No alcohol to be had. So we had a normal dinner instead.

We passed by the tourism office to ask about the bus routes, and guess what we found advertised among Marahastra's famed rock-cut caves? The Moulin Rouge :)