Our first day in Mumbai turned out to be a multi-faith pilgrimage that we hadn’t really planned on – at least not in a detailed way.  We started with the Hare Krishna Hare Rama temple.  It’s a pretty amazing complex.  The temple itself is impressive, but a small part of a 22 acre campus that has several 6 or 8 story buildings housing a school, several auditoriums, a restaurant, bakery and a lot of other stuff that we didn’t really see.  I have to admit there was a lot here I didn’t understand, but there were people venerating the images of Krishna and other gods and prostrating themselves on the floor in prayer – all very moving.  Couldn’t take pictures inside, so all I have are a couple of shots of the exterior – and one of another little temple across the street that didn’t seem to be connected.

From there we took a quick rickshaw ride to Juhu Beach and walked about a quarter of a mile up the beach – it’s a nice sandy beach on the Arabian Sea.

From there we took a taxi down the coast to Haji Ali Dargah – the tomb of a Muslim saint.  It’s about 500 yards off the shore with a causeway out to it.  Hundreds of pilgrims making their way there and venerating the saint.  Another very holy place.  Very moving.

After that we headed home and kicked back for a while before heading to Ravi’s friend Chandan’s apartment for dinner with a group of his and Ravi’s friends.  His building is just above Mount Mary Church, so we checked that out on our way.  It was decorated to a fair-thee-well for Christmas.  Outside and across the street from the church is this big shrine to Mary with yet more decorations.  I think my favorite is the juxtaposition of the crucifix, two Santas (one with a saxaphone), a Christmas Tree and Mary up on the top watching over it all.

So, while we didn’t really plan it that way, we managed to visit the three major faiths of India on our first day: Hindu, Muslim and Christian. An auspicious beginning for our pilgrimage.

I told a lot of friends that I was going to try to keep the blog up as we traveled.  Unfortunately, the combination of Wi-Fi issues and being so busy every day has left very little time for that.  Today (Thursday, our last full day in Mumbai) we have very little on our agenda, so maybe I can catch up.  I’ll give it a shot anyway.

We arrived on Sunday around noontime after 30+ hours of flying – both of us through London Heathrow, but on separate flights to get there.  Randy had a direct flight from LAX to Heathrow, but because I was using miles (to fly first class), I had a red-eye from LAX to Boston with a two hour layover there and then a flight from there to Heathrow.  We met up there and then were on the same flight from Heathrow to Mumbai.  All the flights were long, but being in first class definitely made it bearable – was able to sleep a lot of the way.  Randy didn’t have as good a time in coach, but we both managed to make it without being terribly sleep-deprived.  A minivan met us at the airport and brought us to our hotel.

The hotel is great.  We have a fairly standard room with a balcony that looks at an apartment building about 30 feet away, so not a great view, but at least we can step outside without having to go downstairs.  The staff couldn’t be friendlier or more helpful and the breakfast buffet is really good – all pretty much unfamiliar stuff, but all tasty and filling.  The coffee is good and gets us going. We’re in a quiet part of the suburb Bandra – stayed here because Ravi’s brother and all his friends (one of whom he’s staying with) live nearby and since we had dinner with them the first three nights we were here, this was most convenient.  It’s pretty easy to get around by either motorized rickshaws or taxis – to get downtown takes about half an hour.  Traffic is unbelievably crazy and the ride is always a challenge to the nerves, but the drivers all seem to get through it without crashing.  Horn-honking is constant and de rigueur.

The only issue we’ve had is with the Wi-Fi.  It took a day to get our “userid and password” and then couldn’t get connected at all on that first try.  Didn’t have time to deal with it because we were out and running around so complained about it when we got home that evening.  They eventually got it going and I was able to connect with my phone (it’s the style where you connect to the Wi-Fi with a key and then when you open your browser the first thing you get is a signon screen where you enter your name and password).  So when Randy tried it with his laptop, he was unable to get connected – kept getting the logon screen over and over.  And when I tried to connect with my tablet, I got the same result.  So we complained again and they sent Mr. Tech Support to visit us.  Turns out only one device can be connected with that userid at a time, but he could get us another userid.  We told him we each had two devices so we’d need four userids then.  Well, we can only have two userids for the fee we’re paying to use it and if we needed more they’d have to charge us for two more.  So we deicded to live with the laptop and the tablet using the Wi-Fi and the phones using data over the air.  I’ve never heard of such a thing, but it’s not a huge deal since we both have Verizon’s Global Data plan on our phones, so that’s been working fairly well (although it’ll probably affect my TripAdvisor review).  But, like I said, it took us two days to get all of that straightened out.

So now I’ll try to add some more posts about what we did each day and all we’ve seen.  Suffice to say we’ve really attacked our “multi-faith pilgrimage” head on – we’ve visited with Krishna, Ganesha, Shiva, the Jains, and of course, our own Christian heritage.  And seen the remains of the British Raj that built the major buildings of this city in the late 19th century.  It’s all been amazing.  Stay tuned.  Here are some hotel pics.