Some Sights in Mumbai
It was hot and muggy and Sue had an umbrella open all the time to protect alternately from sun and rain and as we looked up we thought we were in jolly old England again looking at Big Ben but it’s called Rajabai Tower and it chimes every hour on the campus of Mumbai University. It soars 260 feet and has a spiral staircase that is closed because either the stairs are decrepit or people fling themselves off the tower, and is full of stained glass and oriental art. At one time the clock tower played something like fifteen songs, including “Rule Britannia”. We didn’t even know about it but apparently when you ask the desk at the hotels Mumbai India claims they shrug. Well, there really is much to see here.
Like the Prince of Wales Museum near the Gateway of India and where we took a Victoria (not the lingerie shop) but that’s what they call a horse drawn carriage. Sue looked longingly at the horse then at me so I guess we’ll be going out on one but we had really come to see the museum, not the Bombay Natural History Museum next door. The Prince of Wales Museum is a stunning vaguely European Gothic-like structure with definite Mooring influences of the style with a big white almost Russian white onion dome. It has art from Tibet and Nepal, very rare and valuable, and bronzes from Tibet and artifacts from India that go back four thousand years. It is most known for the assemblage of mini paintings from all over India.
Mumbai though is just a tidal wave of humanity, the most populous city in India with over thirteen million people, a real sensory delight of honking horns, smell of curry, obscure alleys and byways, and wild pulsating markets in this exotic city.
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