Mumbai also known as City of Hopes is situated along the shores of Arabian Sea. It is one of popular and busiest city of the world. It is also called as the financial capital of India. It will always be a pleasure when you are planning to visit Mumbai. The all time busy people's, the crowded locals trains and variety foods all keep us busy and make us feel like living.
It has been my third visit to this beautiful city in last 6 months. Everytime it never fails to surprise me in one way or the other. This time it was a plan for 3 days and choose to stay at a backpackers hostel which i loved the most "Backpackers Panda" at Colaba near Gateway of India.
The famous Taj Hotel was just a few minutes away from this beautiful hostel. I reached the stay around 08 Am and kept my bag on the common area on the top floor which is known as Common Area and then went for a walk along the Gateway of India. The morning breeze was so chill and it was a perfect way to start the day.
Around 11 AM one of my friend - Monachan, also came to Mumbai for some Movie festival and both of them together checked in to our room. After having a nice breakfast near the hostel, we went to Victoria hall, where the movie directed by my friend has been screened. The movie festival was based on LGBTQ community and their way of living and life surrounding them.
The festival has screened a lot of movies about the community directed by various filmmakers around the globe. The movies screened their showcased the difficulties faced by the community due to unawareness and the peoples mindset to not accept them as part of society. I spent the time their till evening and then decide to visit the most famous Siddhivinayak temple.
The temple's architecture was so beautiful and there were lots of peoples coming to the temple. As it was evening time, i have to stand in a long queue to visit lord Ganesha, who is the main deity of the temple. The prasad given at the temple was to delicious.
Around 7 in the evening, i went to back to Gateway of India for it s beautiful view. The evening breeze and the Taj view adjacent to Gateway of India was simply astonishing. After having a dinner with my friend, we ended that wonderful day.
We woke up with a lot of dreams about our day, it is in our days to make the most of it. Like others we also woke the second day in Mumbai with hope of seeing new things. So we thought of visiting Elephanta caves that day. So after refreshing up and having breakfast, we went to get our tickets for reaching the place. We got the deluxe ticket (as they call it), at paying some extra money then planned.
After waiting for 30 minutes we got into the boat that will take us to the caves. We heard form the sources that it will take an hour to reach there, but it actually took 2 hours to reach there. We reached there at around 11 AM in the morning and we got the ticket for entering the entered the caves which is a little above the hill. The climate was so hot making it difficult for reaching the cave.
My friend initially gave up is will to reach there, after convincing him for 10 mins, we reached the caves. It was worth spending our time. It consists of five caves. We spent around 2 hours. While returning they dropped at a port from where we have no idea how to reach Gateway of India. After speaking to some peoples nearby we came to know that we have to travel for another 30 mins to reach our place.
We had our lunch in a hotel near the port and got into an shared cab. We reached Gateway around 4:30 PM. For me, it is a new experience but for my friend it was a different thing. He has completely wasted a day of attending the movie festival by travelling with me to caves. After having a short tea break we went to attend the festival.
We stayed there for 3 hours till 8 PM. After that we came back to our room and had a bath and went for dinner. The dinner was the most beautiful thing happened to us on that day. It was a worthy dinner after spending the day completely roaming. We end the day with a delicious dinner.
The next day we decided to check out of the wonderful hostel and we parted way from each other, while he went for attending the last of the festival, i decided to spent sometime on Marine Drive and take a local train to Airoli, where i had a friend staying along with his friends.
After spending an hour in marine drive, i went to church gate for boarding a train to Thane and from their to Airoli. After reaching my friend's home, it was a great day. We are meeting after a long time, so we decided to have our lunch outside. We had a nice North Indian thali and juices. The evening time was so lovely to go around the place and i left to Chennai that night.
Mumbai is the place that i have been missing badly in my life now. hope to visit it soon for a longer stay..
Some more picutures of Mumbai.
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