Bombay

First off, yes, I call it Bombay and not Mumbai. I've found that several of my colleagues refer to it as this, and most switch between the two.

A couple of weekends ago we returned to Bombay for the first time in over two years. During what was my first visit, we stayed at the Marriott in Juhu Beach, which I now know to be quite far from the center of the city. As a result, we spent most of our time hanging out at the hotel - enjoying the pool, the incredible breakfast buffet and the (once) popular nightclub there.

This time I vowed to get out and see more of the sights. Fortunately, there aren't that many sights in Bombay so we were also able to spend a lot of time relaxing at the hotel pool and enjoy our view of the sea from our hotel room. Here's the view...

View from our room at the Trident

On the first night, we walked around the Colaba area, including the Taj Palace Hotel and Cafe Leopold, both targets in the Mumbai attacks. We stopped by the Gateway of India, which I found utterly unimpressive and very small. It left me asking, "This is it?" After that brief stop, we had really yummy food at Bademiya, a Bombay institution. It rivals Delhi's Khan Cha Cha, but it's even bigger and takes over the entire alleyway with tables and chairs.

The Taj Palace Hotel

On our second day, we did the required visits to Victoria Terminus, Bombay University and the High Court, wandered through the Oval Maidan to watch a few cricket matches and eventually made our way back to the hotel for some pool time. As weekends in Calcutta (at the Park Hotel) and Bombay (at the Trident), I've decided to give up staying in smaller (and less expensive) hotels in major cities. The comfort, amenities and service are too much to give up! We ended the day with a very nice, relaxing dinner at the restaurant Indigo in Colaba. If we lived in Bombay, we would make regular visits to this place!

Victoria Terminus

Bombay High Court and Bombay University

On our final day in Bombay, we gorged ourselves on the great breakfast buffet and squeezed in a little more time at the pool. Finally, we headed off towards the airport, but stopped at Dhobi Ghat and the Racecourse on our way. Dhobi means washer in Hindi and Dhobi Ghat is the main place where the washers do they thing - cleaning laundry in the rows and rows of bins and then hanging them out to dry. And as luck would have it, in the 2 minutes that we stopped at the Racecourse, a race was just about to begin and we managed to catch the horses running by.

Dhobi Ghat - where most of the city's clothes are washed and ironed