Saturday 01 February

Mumbai

Our train from Hosapete arrived in Mumbai later than expected, Matthew had booked last night in the Trident hotel, Mumbai even though we were going to be on the train so that we could check in as soon as we arrived. 

We had a quick look around the station – CSMT (Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminal), formerly Victoria – completed in 1887.

We headed to our hotel to freshen up, sort out laundry for hotel to wash and then go down for breakfast.

After breakfast we wandered along Marine Drive then headed to the museum. We passed through Oval park – where lots of people were playing cricket … I was settling in to watch (I love cricket),  but Matthew was becoming impatient. 

We passed a big art festival near the university and learned that today was Mumbai Pride! And the annual march was this afternoon at 3! We decided that we had to go to that!

The museum was lovely and we particularly liked the textile gallery where we were able to do a little bit of fabric printing.

We took a cab to near the start of the pride march and started looking for it – luckily we found it quite quickly – small but rather wonderful. Matthew wrote a separate blog about that. 

While we were planning our trip, Matthew said that he wanted to see if we could make a reservation at Mumbai’s poshest 5-star luxury hotel – the Taj Mahal Palace, which is beside the Gateway of India. The ‘Taj’ opened in 1903. The hotel was commissioned by  the industrialist Jamshedji Tata – who founded the Tata company. It is said that he decided to build a luxury hotel in Bombay after he was refused entry to Watson’s Hotel in the grounds of his ethnicity. The Taj Mahal was also one of a number of hotels attacked in November 2008 by a terrorist group – 167 people were killed, 31 at the Taj. There was significant damage to the hotel too – the roof was destroyed by fire. The Taj has been restored and is now a desirable destination. 

Matthew emailed the hotel a few months ago to ask if vegan afternoon tea was available. Slightly to our surprise we had an immediate response – less surprising was the answer … they were passing our question on to the chef! I thought bloody hell – if you’re a chef, then you say of course I can prepare a vegan afternoon tea. Anyway, we didn’t get a further response until just before we left – an email with a vegan afternoon tea menu attached. Excellent, we could book that.

Well, the best laid plans often go awry… when we arrived at the Trident Hotel this morning we needed to send some of our clothes to be laundered. I chatted with Matthew about including my trousers, which needed washing and wearing my shorts today, which were clean. He thought that would be ok and so I wore my shorts. After the pride march we hailed a cab to take us to Taj Mahal. We had a look at India Gate and then went in to the hotel.

A sign outside the dining room door said ‘formal attire only’ and Matthew asked a waiter if I could go in wearing shorts. I could not! So that was that.

All was not lost, however, Matthew is his father’s son and is often very well organised and has backup plans for these sorts of eventualities (just like his dad used to do with a notepad). There exists an epic spreadsheet with several tabs – rows are days on our trip and columns include things like where we’re staying, if it’s booked, how booked, booking reference number, if it’s paid or to pay, hotel website, sites to visit in that place, any potential gardens or horticultural highlights nearby and additional optional things to do in that place. If we’re travelling, which train, is it booked, is it paid for, which carriage, which seat … you get the idea ! He’s been poring over this spreadsheet most evenings for weeks.

One of the columns in Matthew’s contains the fruits of his searches for vegan food providers in every place – so in Mumbai the closest one to where we were at the Taj was called Earth Cafe – we headed there and they had a lovely menu … I could hardly believe that it was all vegan – and I kept asking the staff to reassure me. For some reason, Matthew has been wanting pizza for the last few days – so pizza it was. Yum! 

We walked back to the hotel for tea and biscuits. Yum yum!