November 19, 2014. Touring Mumbai (Bombay)

We took an early AM flight from Hyderabad to Mumbai.  We were picked up by the hotel's orchid-colored purplish taxi.  We are staying at the Orchid Hotel, a swanky 5-star hotel.  What a contrast to the noisy streets.  Mumbai has a population of 12 million, with the country's largest slum, representing 70% of that.  

It is much more tropical here, at about a humid 90 degrees.   Swathi, Meredith's sister-in-law, lives here.  She picked us up, and we engaged a driver and van  for the day to take us around.

Mumbai is on a bay next to the Indian Ocean.  We crossed a long bridge to another section of town called the Queen's Necklace, named because at night the lights along the waterfront look like a necklace.  There is a strong Victorian architecture heritage here, left from the British Occupation.  Beautiful buildings.   

We had lunch in an English tearoom...

We had saag paneer, a lamb rice dish, minced lamb,  curds (yogurt), all with roti, the breads used to eat everything up with. After a hot finger-bowl wash, we shared some interesting teas.

Then, on to shopping.  We shopped along the street where it was a crush of humanity.  The enclosed area turned it to a stifling 100 degrees.  Meredith bought some harem pants and George bought a belt.  Swathi helped us with the bargaining.  Swathi later told us that it was a relatively uncrowded day; usually many more people.  I can't imagine.  

We climbed back into our air conditioned van, where I recovered consciousness :-), and  toured the city more.  Back at the hotel, we relaxed at the hotel bar.  Then we went to a kabob restaurant on the rooftop.  By then, it was much cooler, so it was very pleasant.  We are near the airport so we watched planes landing.

For dinner, we had paneer (Indian cheese) kabobs, and tandoori veg kabobs.  There was a nice musical duo performing.  After dinner, the chef took us back to the kitchen where we saw the sizzling tandoor oven, used to grill the kabobs and naan.

The room is very comfortable and quiet.  We still have a bit of jet lag, so we crashed and slept well.