Time in Mumbai!

Alright, let's reflect on Mumbai, India! It is one of the biggest cities in the world and I can say that we got around the city quite a bit and it seemed like it was never ending. Mumbai was HUGE, humid, hot, loud, busy, full of delicious food and wonderfully kind people. 

DAY 1 - Jen had her field class so she was off with students for the day. Chris and the kids were on their own to go explore. One of major sites to see was the Gateway of India, which was built to honor the arrival of King George and Queen Victoria, but more importantly was the exact spot the last British troops left after India won the fight for independence. To get there, we decided to walk...

Cars, buses, scooters were flying by, but the it wasn't just the narrow places to walk right next to traffic (Guthrie did survive this port), it was the noise. Every driver uses their horn as a form of communication. Never in anger, but more as an alert, or a way to say "hi," or maybe "My breakfast was delicious, how was yours?" Who knows what they were saying with all the honking. But they said it A LOT. The picture above is us walking with a few other people from the ship. Rigley is carrying Indy, the sweetest and youngest voyager on the ship. 

Next we ended up at a HUGE park. And the #1thing you do in any open space is... play cricket. There were probably 12 cricket matches going on in this park as we walked by. 

We stuck out wherever we went and the people were not shy about asking to get their pictures taken with us. Whole cricket teams stopped and got a team photo with a bunch of white people. 

Best part of the day by far was when some local kids came up to our kids to ask is they could play soccer together. Our kids were all in. Finally the kids got to run around and be silly and have fun. They all had so much fun talking in the universal language of football.

Day 2 found the Johnson-Leck crew reunited and off to see the caves on Elephanta Island. The Elephanta Caves are a series of cave temples from the 8th and 9th century. It was a good excuse to ride a ferry and get out of the city for a while. The ferries did a significantly less amount of honking.

The caves were pretty great. It was quiet and not crowded so we got to stroll and enjoy ourselves.

And there were lots of monkeys. Some could be pretty aggressive if you had food out. We saw a few eating ice cream cones and bragging about it to their friends. 

Two good days in Mumbai. Great food and a fairly easy time getting around. Days 3 and 4 got a tad bit dicier...