London in the tropics

This afternoon I had a few hours left to explore Mumbai a bit on foot. I made a walk from the hotel on the west side of the peninsula through the old English town to the waterfront at Colaba on the east side. It was way too hot to walk, because finally the sun came out, but it was a fantastic walk anyway. This is literally London in the tropics, but a bit greener. Some of the building are absolutely stunning, especially Bombay University and the High Court. I walked for about 2 hours, and only saw European architecture. I probably could have know this, had I prepared a bit for this trip in advance (I did prepare, but only the business part, not the tourist part), but I was very surprised.

Mumbai (or Bombay, the original name that many people still use) is a great city to spend a few days, there is so much to see and do. And a lot looks so familiar if you know England a bit. My impression of India gets better and better. But the CEO of the company that we talked to this morning warned us: Mumbai is not representative of the whole of India, and the part of Mumbai that we are staying in is not representative of the whole of Mumbai. So we start with the best of the best so to speak. No power cuts, good internet, relatively clean and not too poor (relatively speaking to what I was expecting). Wednesday and Thursday we will travel a bit farther out of town, let’s see if we still like it then.

For some of the pictures that I took of the street scenes and the European architecture, see my pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs (or if you read this later, click on the photo set Mumbai/Bombay on the right side of the screen).