Here the extremes of wealth and income are side by side. We saw a 28-storey block built by a billionaire to house all six of his family (plus their servants), and the price per square foot of some apartments would value our home at 2.4 million dollars. Incredible! But just along the road is one of the slum areas, the first possible home for many of the rural poor who immigrate to the city. This is, of course, when they are able to afford to sleep anywhere but on the streets.but how they will ever be able to afford proper housing I do not know. Perhaps they have other ambitions. I have tremendous respect for the determination of Indians to succeed, and with no welfare state to sustain them it is often succeed or die.
I decided to go down to the city centre as soon as we arrived, to see if I could buy some of the lovely fabrics the country is famous for: John refused to come but I wasn't worried. I thought I'd catch the shuttle bus from the ship and share a taxi with other passengers. This turned out not to work, so I got my taxi into town alone and ran straight into the rush-hour traffic. London has little to compare with this: Los Angeles maybe. I walked the last bit.
I knew the street I wanted to explore so I walked there, past the famous Taj hotel which was firebombed a couple of years back and is now applying a paranoid level of security: you can't go in unless you are a guest there. But when I got to Colaba Causeway my shopping nerve failed me. The crowds were so thick you had to just let yourself be carried along, past some interesting little shops which could have yielded - who knows what treasure? I tried walking in the road but had to keep doging motor bikes, who very kindly beeped me out of their way and occasionally smiled a "Be careful" at me.
The shop I really wanted was on the other side of the road but I could see no way to cross. I asked a chubby lady in a sari where the crossing was, and she waved me further down the road (through the crowds) but I still couldn't work it out. The traffic density was only part of the problem, the cars blow their horns all the time making thought almost impossible, and there is no sense of lane discipline at all. And there's a raised separator in the middle of the road. As I hovered nervously on the edge, my chubby lady caught up with me, took my hand and walked me across, dodging all the traffic, for all the world as if I were her child! She was so kind.
After all that, it was really disappointing to discover that the Cottage Industries shops have all gone very upmarket and no longer stock just fabrics. They had marvellous brocade coats and umpteen shawls in beautiful colours, but I would probably never wear the first and have too many of the second already. I wandered the side streets but couldn't find anything I wanted so I decided to go and look for a taxi back to the ship.
After 45 minutes of increasing despair, one stopped for me. Why did I find the only non-English speaking taxidriver in Bombay? After some false starts he did get me to the correct port gate, so all was well.
Today meant an early start to visit the Kanheri caves. The drive out there was surprisingly easy - our guide said the rush hour didn't begin until 0830. We took a new road which is a 6 km bridge built between islands and if it hadn't been so foggy the view would have been stupendous. But we arrived without incident at the national park in the suburbs, and the caves are 10 km inside. The environment changed instantly from the mix of high-rises and slums to serene forest and no other vehicles in sight. The forest is home to several sorts of monkey and a lot of birds who must have gone into hibernation among the treetops.
The caves date from about 100AD to about 900AD, and the sculptures in them describe the development of Buddhism in India over that period. They were used as a base by travelling monks, and a home for them during the monsoon periods. They are very dark inside, and I can't quite believe they had a library and scriptorium with wick lamps as their only light, but that's what our guide said. The caves now contain the two largest statues of Buddha in existence since the Taliban blew up the ones in Bamiyan a few years ago.
We had to walk between caves up steps carved in the rock, sometimes crumbling away, always getting higher until we had lovely views over the trees. The sculptures and caves themselves were carved from the rock, much like the ones at Elephanta Island, except that the latter are of Hindu gods. The carvers would have had iron-tipped chisels, but even so the labour involved makes me feel faint.
Returning to the centre we hit the inevitable traffic jams and crawled along Marine Drive, which is quite pretty with many art deco houses. We stopped for a short while to see the Gateway of India where George V landed (the only British ruler ever to set foot on the country) and which was mobbed by local holidaymakers making the most of their Christmas break. I don't know if they call it that, of course!
A late lunch on deck gave me enough sun for the day, and we sailed two hours later, for Goa.
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