Mumbai is India’s 2nd largest city with almost 22 million people. It’s home to Bollywood movies & is a major business center. It’s a little like LA & NY combined India style.

We learned that the city was created by the British who mangled the local place name & called it Bombay.

At first glance Mumbai seems like a very modern Asian city on par with Hong Kong or Singapore. But, over the two days we toured it, we realized it is still very much India, just with more skyscrapers.

Like the rest of India, temples & holy sites are very much a part of Mumbai.

In Mumbai, cows are not allowed to roam the streets due to safety concerns. Rescue cows are kept at one temple making them “Holy Cows” where people can visit & feed them.

A highlight was visiting Mani Bhavan which is the house where Gandhi lived for 17 years.

We visited various parts in the city where life goes on the way it has for many years.

The Crawford Market sells everything including food, pets, & spices.

We just so happened to be in Mumbai on voting day & saw many people working on the election verifying people’s ID so that they can go to the polling place to vote.

Always good to take some time to have fun with the locals.

One evening we visited the famous Victorian Terminus Station which due to its unique construction is also a UNESCO site. With gold inlays & plating along with intricate carvings & statues, it was the most expensive structure the British built in India.

One morning we got up early to visit another fish market.

Next we saw the laundromat… Mumbai style. This area is Dhobi Ghat which means “a place where washer men clean clothes & dries them.” It is the world’s largest open air laundry. Clothes are collected in neighborhoods, then labeled by number by customer. The clothes are then washed, dried, ironed, & delivered back to the owner.

No trip to Mumbai is complete without seeing the Gateway to India. The Gateway to India was finished in 1924 to commemorate the 1911 visit to India by the British Monarch George V & his wife Queen Mary.

Our last major stop was to one of the various Mumbai slums. The slum we visited is where over a million people live & is also where their jobs are. Because labor is VERY cheap, everything from having your vegetables chopped to having clothes made is done in the slums.

This is also where America’s plastic goods come to be recycled. China no longer takes this waste, so now it comes to India to be washed, sorted, & chopped into small pieces before going to factories to be melted & reused.

We ended our stay in Mumbai visiting the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel which is next to the Gateway of India.

The beautiful Taj Mahal Palace was built in 1903. It is just as beautiful in the inside as the outside is grand.

Some may remember it for the 2008 terrorist attacks. For this reason every hotel, we have stayed at has very high security.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner in the US, this means Black Friday is coming too. Here in India they have something different. 😂🤣🤪