Bombay harbour just after sunrise—busy and polluted.

The Indian Navy’s museum and training carrier was parked very close to the Rotterdam.

A band playing popular songs greeted us as we debarked for our tour bus . . .

. . . and we were greeted with a red rose offered by a young Indian woman.

Just one example of the many types of traffic found on Mumbai’s streets.

Almost immediately we saw shacks along the sidewalk where impoverished people were living.

Some smiled and others didn’t, but they all looked so poor and often dirty . . .

. . . and some were sleeping directly on the sidewalk!

This is the house where Mahatma Gandhi lived and worked from 1919 to 1932 . . .

. . . and this is his library.

Just outside the front door of Gandhi’s home walked this elderly man—was he senior enough to remember the days of the Mahatma?

These children were walking home for lunch, our tour guide told us.

The Dhobi Ghats or “laundry slum” as I called it.

Moss in front of the Prince of Wales Museum; the statue of King George V is in the right background.

A clay animal recovered from Harappa—was it a toy or a religious symbol?

An Indian rhinoceros—I don’t believe there are any left in India anymore.

The Gateway to India monument to the British monarchs who came to India in 1911.

Across from the gate is the Taj Hotel.

A view from the bus window gives another example of the types of traffic and vehicles found on Mumbai’s streets.

Squeekie in front of the cruise terminal as we set out on our exploration of Mumbai

Moss with a train guard (conductor) at Victoria Terminus.

The girl who pushed her way in to the picture and then demanded money—she didn’t get any!

A commuter train about to leave on the Central line.

A long distance train awaiting departure.

Victoria Terminus’ lobby—a temple to progress!

Moss in front of Victoria Terminus; Britain’s good gift to India!

This tiny mosque stood right in the middle of the street; cars split to go around both sides!

Beating the laundry to get it clean.




Hanging out the laundry to dry it out—tough to dry in the humid air!

Squeekie at the Dhobi Ghat laundry area

Delivering clean laundry.

We met Oscar (left) and Presti (right) in front of the Taj Hotel

Squeekie in front of the Gateway to India.

Squeekie with the Punjabi doorman in front of the Taj Hotel

The modern lobby of the Taj Hotel . . .

. . . contrasts with the original lobby of the hotel dating from about 1900.

As Rotterdam left Mumbai this waste flame bid us farewell.


Sixty-third Day (Monday, March 23, 2009)-- Today was an at sea day as we ran up the west coast of India from Kochi toward Mumbai. Again Squeekie and I spent much time in the Crow’s Nest in the morning. We were pleased that Captain Olav stopped by our lunch table out on the back deck and chatted for awhile—it is nice to catch up on information about this cruise and this ship.

The big event of this afternoon was the second jewelry fashion show held in the Explorers’ Lounge. Mary, the assistant manager in the shops, had promised Squeekie that she would be called to model for this event as she had for the first, but she was not, and then Mary gave some sort of obvious lie about why that was. Squeek showed a class act by going to the show anyway, rather than boycotting it. The other women who were showing the jewelry asked Squeek why she was not there as a model, and she answered truthfully that she had not been asked. I am sure that Mary heard both the questions and the answer. I wonder if Squeek will be called for the third and final fashion show later in the cruise. . . .

Tonight at dinner in the La Fontaine Dining Room we were invited to sit with our new friends Don Macdonald, who lives in Tampa, Florida, and Anne and Norman Cottman, who live in Henderson, Nevada, which is now a suburb of Las Vegas. Despite a mix-up by the dining room management on the special food which had been ordered, we had a wonderful time getting to know these people. Don is a many-time cruiser (he has over 1500 days with Holland-America), and so are the Cottmans. Anne once worked with the Los Angeles City School system in some senior administrative capacity. Squeekie went on to the Rotterdam show but I bypassed it. Tomorrow we will be in Bombay!


Sixty-fourth Day (Tuesday, March 24, 2009)-- Today we received the full dose of India. We arrived in the harbour of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) shortly after sunrise, and it was crowded with ships of all types and sizes, and the air was as brown with air pollution as had been the skies of Los Angeles on a bad summer day back in the late 1950s! We went out on the forward Deck Six to watch Rotterdam’s arrival, and it was something to see, what with the congestion, the pollution, and the energy of a new (to us) Asian port.

Squeekie had to be up and ready for an early departure this morning. She was taking the one-day overland trip to see the Taj Mahal, which is some 800 miles to the northeast of where we were landing. This tour incorporated an early flight to Agra/Delhi, bus visits to the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort of Agra, lunch and entertainment at a nice hotel, and a flight back to the ship—all at the cost of a fourteen hour day. She had to report at the Queen’s Lounge at 7:20am to set this intense trip in motion. I was not that interested in going to see the Taj Mahal. Oh yes, it is a World Heritage historical site and of course it is an architectural gem, and I respect it for those things, but I just can’t get as excited about a structure that is a monument to one man’s power, self-esteem, and, yes, love (or horniness), so I was staying behind in Mumbai and taking one of the “discovery” bus tours. (Just for the record, I feel similarly about the pyramids.)

Rotterdam had docked on the east (harbour) side of Mumbai, immediately adjacent to the Navy Base. From our verandah on Deck Six we could see over the wall into the Naval Yard, where several ships were docked. Of greatest interest to me was a mid-sized aircraft carrier lying just a hundred yards or so away from our ship. This carrier was of British design, built in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and subsequently modified with a forward-mounted jump deck to accommodate Harrier jets. It was an interesting view of a type of naval vessel that reflected all of the lessons learned in World War Two yet was designed for jets and helicopters, and was smaller than the giant platforms then being built for the American navy. (During our two-day stay in Mumbai I actually had some nice chats with our new friend Tim, the retired Navy Captain, concerning this historic ship off our port side. We eventually learned that this ship—name still unknown to us—functioned as a museum vessel and a training facility for the Indian Naval Service.)

As I debarked from Rotterdam to begin my tour, I was greeted by an Indian band playing an interesting medley of college rah-rah and show tunes, and by an India girl who offered red roses as we came off the gangway. I took one and threaded it in my Australian bush hat. The tour bus picked us up at the dock, just behind the terminal building, and had to drive some distance through the container terminal and around the walls of the adjacent Naval Yard in order to get to the gate leading out on to the streets of Mumbai. Before I speak of the tour, however, I wish to spend a moment discussing the history of the area.

The History of Mumbai-- Mumbai was built upon a series of seven islands which ran parallel to the west coast of India. An extensive land reclamation effort extending over nearly three centuries linked this archipelago into a peninsula, and the names of the former islands have become district names in the city which has grown up here. Artifacts found in the northern part of Mumbai indicate that the islands were inhabited at least as far back as the Neolithinc period. Documented evidence of human habitation dates to about 250 BCE, when the islands and the community living on them was known as “Heptanesia” in Classical Greek, which means “a cluster of seven islands.” (Remember that Alexander the Great conquered an empire which extended to the Indus River in what now is Pakistan in northern India, and Greek merchants subsequently traveled over the Indian subcontinent in search of pepper and other spices.) In the third century BCE the islands were brought into the control of the empire ruled by Asoka (Ashoka), the first great Indian empire builder, who also was the first Indian ruler to support Buddhism. During the next few centuries control of the region was disputed between the Western-Indian Satraps and the Satavahanas. The Hindu rulers of the Silhara Dynasty later governed the islands until 1343, when they were annexed by the Kingdom of Gujarat, which was ruled by a Muslim sovereign. Some of the oldest surviving constructions in the area, the Elephanta Caves and the Walkeshwar temple, date from this time when Hinduism was straining against Islam for the hearts and minds of the populace.

In 1534 the Portuguese appropriated the islands from the Gujarat ruler. Because the sheltered harbour on the east side of the islands was a very good protected anchorage, the area soon was marked on Portuguese maps as “Bom Baia,” (“good bay”), which eventually became appropriated as the name of the area—this is how the name “Bombay” began. (Bombay was the name of this region all through the colonial history of India, but was replaced with “Mumbai” in the 1990s thanks to the political pressure of Indian nationalist groups.) Control of the islands was ceded to England in 1661 as part of a wedding dowry when Princess Catherine de Braganza married King Charles II. Seven years later the islands were leased to the British East India Company. The company was pleased to have a good port on the west coast of the Indian subcontinent, and soon transferred its headquarters from Surat on the east coast to Bombay. From this point onwards the population of the city grew tremendously and the islands began their long transformation into a peninsula.

In 1857, following supression of the Sepoy Mutiny, the British government replaced the East India Company’s rule of India with a direct rule. The Bombay Presidency was established as one of the two major colonial government entities. Cotton mills were first established in Bombay in the mid-nineteenth century to industrialise the production of cotton, a fabric which is native to India. Industrialisation, the good port which handled the majority of India’s passenger and freight traffic, and the early construction of railways outward from Bombay quickly made that city the commercial and financial capital of India, a status it has retained to this day.

On December 2, 1911, King George V of Great Britain and his wife Mary landed in Bombay to start a tour of British India. To commemorate this landing the city erected a memorial gateway which still stands, although now it is a bit tattered as most Indians push memories of their colonial past into the closet. Many other structural reminders of Bombay’s colonial past also remain, and I saw some of them on my tour of the city. In 1995, Indian nationalists persuaded the city and state government to change the name from Bombay to the older name of a local Hindu goddess, Mumbai. Ah, the joys of nationalism!

OK, that’s enough history, back to my tour today-- So I boarded the tour bus and we drove through the port facility. There were big ships docked all around—Mumbai clearly was a busy port. As soon as we came through the gate leading out on to the streets of the city, we were introduced to the confusion, complexity, and filth that make up the great city of Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay.

First off, the traffic on the streets is nothing less than dangerous. It is a complex mixture of motor vehicles of all types from big trucks and busses down to “putt-putt” tri-wheelers, animal-pulled carts, human-pushed or -pulled carts, bicycles, and foot traffic. The best way to describe this bewildering concoction of traffic is to say that the laws may assert that traffic in India is British-style left hand, that there are legal crosswalks and traffic lights, and that every licensed driver of a vehicle in India has received safety training, but the reality is quite different. Our tour guide told us “In the United States they drive on the right, and in the U.K. on the left, but in India they drive wherever they can.” He also claimed that drivers’ licenses are easy to bribe from corrupt officials, so there are few really trained drivers on the streets and highways of India. This may or may not really be true, but I saw today as our bus wove though Mumbai, vehicles running lights, dodging pedestrians, swerving to the far side of the road to pass or get through jams, and even vehicles driving up on sidewalks to get through. Oh, GAWD!!!

Second, the city is FILTHY! There is no other word for it. Most of the buildings we saw, even some of the majestic financial institutions, appear dirty, often unpainted or stained by large patches of algae or moss. The streets are dirty, far beyond the dustiness one would expect from a city in the dry season, and are laden with trash and speckled with potholes, broken concrete curbs, and so forth. Yes, there are public lavatories frequently located among the city’s blocks, to permit even homeless people to relieve themselves, but these facilities appeared soiled in the extreme; at one point when we were stopped in traffic our bus could even smell the stench from one of these facilities wafting across the street.

Thirdly, the city is crowded in the extreme, reflecting a problem in India as a whole. India has a population (estimated, because they have never conducted an accurate census) of OVER ONE BILLION people. Where can this peninsula sticking south out of the Asian continent put all of these people? That is one sixth of the entire world’s population squeezed into less than one twenty sixth of the earth’s land area! Mumbai is estimated to have a population of seventeen million living within its thirty-three square miles, making it the sixth largest city in the world. They really don’t know, of course, because the Indian government seems unable to take accurate census reports, but that is the estimate. The problem is that there is neither enough room nor enough housing for all of these people, so there is a HUGE population of impoverished street people living in Bombay, and this was apparent to us in the tour bus within moments of going out into the streets of the city. As may be seen by the pictures included in this blog entry, we saw shacks, crude tent structures, and other makeshift configurations all around the city, on sidewalks, in alleyways, everywhere they could be put. I even saw people just sleeping on the sidewalk with no cover or protection—and at least one dead body! The people I saw in these places for the most part seemed dirty, even if they waved at our bus as it went by, but Squeekie later said to me that, as her bus drove through Mumbai in the early morning, headed toward the airport for her flight to Agra and the Taj Mahal, she had seen street people who were bathing or brushing their teeth while standing on the sidewalk.

Well, through this maze of people and traffic we threaded, dodging some really difficult traffic jams resolved by a blaring cacophony of vehicle horns (the bus driver later told be “We talk with our horns”). We passed by numerous colonial-era buildings, such as the Mumbai metropolitan police station and the wonderful Victoria Railway Terminal (more about this in tomorrow’s entry). It was interesting to see these relics of India’s British past, but at the same time saddened to see the condition into which most of these architectural gems had been allowed to deteriorate. Finally our bus arrived at its first stop, Mani Bhavan, the home of Mahatma Gandhi during the years when he was the major leader of the civil disobedience movement against the British “Raj” (colonial government of India). The house is on a relatively quiet side street a block off one of the major streets of the city. It is three stories high and seems in fairly good condition despite its age. Gandhi lived here from 1917 until 1934. We went inside and I was fascinated by his library which has been preserved. The curator spoke to me with great pride; “He had over 40,000 books,” I was informed. There was a museum or photographs and artifacts on the second floor, and his living quarters were preserved on the top floor. It was an interesting museum to a man who was a very good example to not just Indians or the British, but to the entire world. After all, the use of civil disobedience to achieve political goals, although time consuming and best used against powers who respect the law, is a much better gift to the world than the bloody terrorism some forces use today.

After this stop our bus again trundled through the congested streets to a point some distance north of the city’s commercial centre. We crossed over a railway line (part of the Central system which reaches into Bombay from the north), and stopped in front of what can only be designated a slum. Our tour guide, whose name I confess I do not remember, told us this was the famous “Dhobi Ghats,” where much of the laundry cleaning of Mumbai is done. I climbed out of the bus and took a range of pictures of this very unusual activity. In a large triangle of land bounded by the railway, a busy street, and some commercial buildings, there is a slum of shacks in the midst of which may be found concrete tubs for washing. The washing, which is all done by hand, seems to be done just like it has been done since ancient times. Picture a person pounding soapy clothes on a rock on the edge of a stream, then transfer this scene to the Dhobi Ghats, what I have come to call the “laundry slums,” where people (it seemed to be mostly men) pounded laundry on concrete surfaces. They appeared to use soap of some sort, but what I could not discover. It was an interesting stop!

After this stop it was back into the older colonial core of the city for a stop at the Prince of Wales Museum—oops, that name also has been changed, to the . . . well, I guess I forget. Our stop here was only 30 minutes, which emphatically is NEVER enough time to enjoy the treasures of a museum, but I headed straight to the one display I just had to see, objects recovered from the Harappan or Indus River Civilisation. In a glass-fronted case I saw little animals—they looked like sheep or goats, but I could not read the sign in Hindi—which were items found at Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, sites of the Indus River civilization which flourished around 3000 BCE, some five thousand years ago! I teach about this civilization in my world history classes at Fullerton, and it was nice to finally get to see some of the genuine remains of this little-known early human flourishing. I wondered as I looked at a clay (or terra-cotta) figure I took to be a billy goat, was this the toy of some child, a symbol of wealth or property in a civilization which had not yet learned to write, or a religious icon of some sort? I do not know, and the brief, Hindi-language sign beside the item did not clarify. In an adjacent room I found the mounted remains of a mighty Indian rhinoceros, probably hunted town by some British sportsman or military officer back in the days of the Raj. Without access to the internet I cannot be certain, but I believe that this animal is now extinct in India. I also purchased s guidebook in the museum’s bookstore, but it was not a detailed document.

After this, our bus went to a prominent place on the harbour side of the old city, the famous “Gateway to Empire” built to commemorate the landing of British King George V and Queen Mary in their Indian Raj in December of 1911. Although the archway is now closed off, there is evidence that some effort has been made by the local government to keep this interesting colonial-era monument intact and reasonably clean. The gateway, which is in the form of a Roman-style triumphal arch, faces out to the harbour to mark the place where the monarchs stepped ashore; on the city side of the arch is a large paved plaza which was filled with people coming to look at the monument and the ships in the harbour. Just across the street on the city side of that plaza stands one of Mumbai’s most famous buildings, the Taj Hotel, yet another colonial-era monument. I took pictures, but I knew I would be back in the morrow because Squeekie had expressed an interest in seeing these things, too.

Eventually in the late afternoon the tour bus pushed through the terrible traffic in Mumbai’s city centre and returned to the Rotterdam. I spent the remainder of the day aboard the ship downloading and sorting pictures and awaiting the return of my Squeekie from her trip to the Taj Mahal (see forthcoming blog entry).


Sixty-fifth Day (Wednesday, March 25, 2009)-- Squeekie’s late return last night did not prevent us from a good start this morning. We enjoyed a nice breakfast in the Lido and then planned our itinerary before we set out to discover Mumbai by ourselves this day. I admit that the filth and traffic of the city had put me off yesterday, and made me less eager to tackle this again on my own, rather than from the cultural insulation of a tour bus, but at last we planned what to do.

The first issue, after we went down the gangway and through the cruise terminal, was to obtain a taxi. We had planned to hire taxis in stages, taking us to individual places and leaving us there to do our own thing until we flagged down a new taxi. Because the first stop on our list was the railway station, where we expected to remain at least an hour, this seemed to be the only way to do what we wished. However, the powerful taxi drivers union in Mumbai would emphatically NOT let us do that. Instead, the few drivers lined up outside the terminal desired to drive us around all day for a negotiated flat fee which seemed high. We debated with three drivers and came to no agreement, and Squeek in some frustration had turned to walk back on to the Rotterdam, when a deal worked out. We were able to hire a driver for a specific price and an agreed upon length of time, and he agreed to wait for us at each stop. His name was Ali and he was a Muslim, somewhat unusual in this strongly Hindu community.

Our first effort was to get out of the port area. As I saw yesterday, it was a long drive—nearly a mile, I think—to get to the gate that would let us out on to the streets of the city. It was at this gate that I saw why there were so few taxis on the dock by our ship and why the taxi drivers were so anxious to secure passengers for an entire day; each time the taxi driver sought to go through the gate (in either direction in or out), he was forced to pay a bribe to the guard at that gate. Ali had to do this to get out.

Then we were on the crowded streets. I will not describe them again, as by now if you are still with me on this entry you will understand that they were crowded, disorganized (and disorderly), and dangerous to drive upon, but Ali did a masterful job of getting us through the congestion to our first destination, the Victoria Railway Terminal or, as it has been called since 1996, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. This complex structure is the westernmost end point of the Central Railways of India, and also the southern end point of the central and harbour lines of Mumbai's metropolitan rail transport system. A large section of the building is given over to administrative functions of the Central Railways, including commercial operations such as railway reservations.

The first railway in British India was built westward out of Bombay in 1853, to provide a more rapid journey to New Delhi and the east coast of the subcontinent. Eventually this route became known as the Central Railway, and the system radiating from the terminus remains known by that name to this day. Construction of this magnificent building, started in 1878 based upon a design by F. W. Stevens, was completed in 1888. Even though construction was nowhere near completed, it began being used on New Years Day in 1882, and received its initial name of the “Victoria Terminus” in honour of the then-Queen-Empress on Jubilee Day in 1887. This ten-year construction project, one of the largest in British India up to that time, cost 16.14 lakhs of Rupees (that is 1.614 million rupees). Based I suspect on the model of Saint Pancras Station in London, it is an early example of the Victorian Gothic Revival style (based on Italian Gothic models) which became a uniquely Bombay style of architecture model for other administrative buildings built during the British Raj in India—the Metropolitan Police Building and the Prince of Wales Museum are two other examples, and there are others as well. This style emerged when British architects worked with Indian craftsmen to include Indian architectural traditions and idioms to decorate what had begun as a European expression. The complicated ground plan of the building (it seems to be laid out in an “L” pattern) is decorated by marvelous filigrees, carvings and arches. The south-western part of the building is topped by a dome holding up a statue of Progress.

When the building was first used it held not only railway functionaries such as the accounts, chief engineer and traffic manager, but also other municipal offices such as the superintendent of the police. Curiously, railway tickets were also printed in the same building. The number of people working here rose for almost a hundred years, but in the 1980s the Railways began to lighten the load on the structure; it presently holds over 700 employees of the Central Railway. In September 1999 pedestrian access to the suburban railway terminus was moved underground with the construction of a subway beneath the street our in front, built at the incredible cost of 150 million Rupees. This building has long been on the urban heritage list and a protected monument; it was put on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2004, the first functional administrative building to receive this honour.

Squeekie and I went through the subway beneath the street to cross into the station. We came up the stairs and directly into the station building, where thousands of Indians were still coming off trains and going to work even though it was late in the morning by this time. We began taking pictures right away despite the crowds. One portion of the station is used by the local commuter trains, and it was the busiest section, although I was able to get some pictures after passengers passed by me headed for the station’s exits. Then there was another section clearly for long-distance trains; it was quieter at this time but it was clear that these trains too were busy at certain times of the day. At one place a young woman with a baby pushed her way into the picture I was taking, and then asked for money—she followed us around for a few minutes but I ignored her and eventually she wandered away. I will not pay money (or anything) to any beggars; we were warned that in India this would be a special problem, but handing money or anything else out would simply draw more beggars, so we just did our best to ignore them.

I loved the trains and the platform section of the station, but other parts of the station also were of interest. At the head of the building there was a lobby area which looked just like a Gothic cathedral in Europe. I was amazed by this in large part because one would not expect to see this architectural design so far away from its birthplace, and in a building the use of which is so far removed from a church. (Still, I do think that British architects in the nineteenth century did consider railway stations to be as much temples to progress as churches in an earlier time were thought to be temples to God.) Squeekie and I spent the better part of an hour in this magnificent structure and I would have been there longer, but some soldiers hassled me for taking pictures inside the station (I suspect they were looking for bribes, but I cannot be sure). At any rate, Bombay’s Victoria Terminus (and it always will retain that name in my mind) was a magnificent structure, as much a monument to the importance of railways in the nineteenth century as it was to the British Raj. I consider that Britain’s greatest gift to India was the network of railways on the subcontinent, and I am glad that the Republic of India at any rate still uses this system to something like its full capacity. I was amazed, for example, to learn that the Victoria Terminus handles the better part of ONE MILLION passengers EACH DAY!!! I am very pleased that we were able to get the views of the station and its trains that we did.

Our next stop was to have been the Gateway, but I thought Squeekie should see the laundry slum at the Dhobi Ghats, and so we asked Ali to take us there. This place is far north of the older centre of the city snd required a great deal of driving. It was saddening to see this great city, once known to Indians as the “City of Gold” for the industry and commerce centred here, now appear dirty and dilapidated, and overwhelmed by an impoverished population. Ali parked us right where the bus had parked yesterday, on the side of the road where there was a good view of the entire slum area. Squeekie and I were able to go over to the low wall and take numerous pictures of this area, which offers the sort of contrast we are beginning to understand is an essential part of India—in this dirty slum area laundry is made clean. There were concrete and stone vats filled with water where washermen were beating the laundry to clean it; there were strings of laundry being hung out to dry, although I wondered how wet laundry could dry out in the humid air of this region. As we left this area we also saf hand-pulled carts piled hight with colourful bags returning washed and cleaned laundry to its rightful owners. This was an interesting complexity, and so different from how laundry is washed in Western societies.

After this Ali took us back into the old centre of town on the harbour front to see the Gateway and the Taj Hotel. By this time we were in the midst of lunchtime, so traffic was even more congested than it had been earlier in the mid-morning. Not only were there more vehicles on the streets, but everywhere we saw people walking out to head to lunch; even in many cases children leaving school to eat at home! Squeekie came to the conclusion that our taxi ride through the traffic was nothing more than a version of the famous Bumper Car rides at amusement parks!

At last Ali dropped us off in front of the Taj Hotel, just across the street (the plaza) from the Gateway. We walked over to see this monument to British Imperialism a bit closer and to our surprise ran into Presti and Oscar from the ship! It was great to see that they had received some time off, for they work so hard all the time; we took our picture with them. Then we walked back across the street to go into the Taj Hotel. This is one of the places which had endured an attack by terrorists some time before, and there was still evidence of repair work being done.

Squeekie liked the Punjabi-dressed doormen who now work ourside the building on the curb to greet arriving guests. Then we had to pass through airport-style security to get into the hotel, but once inside we were able to relax in the comfort of a truly beautiful structure so unlike the dirty and congested city outside. The hotel lobby is now in the newer part of the building, and it looks very modern (see pictures). We explored the building as best we could, and did a bit of shopping, too. In the older part of the building one security officer permitted us to go in to the old lobby area and take pictures; it had recently been repaired from the damage done by last year’s terrorist bombing. Squeekie and I really liked the hotel, but I must say that its opulence and cleanliness offered a sharp contrast to the dirt and poverty outside.

After this we decided that we were ready to return to the Rotterdam. Ali desired to take us to do some shopping, but we adamantly refused and he did take us back through the crowded streets to the same gate we had exited hours earlier. We had to wait in the taxi as he went into the guard shack; we were uncertain what was happening and I was becoming concerned by the little boy who was begging outside the window on my side of the taxi. After a few minutes Ali returned; he said nothing, but I suspect that he had to pay another bride to the guard ao allow him to bring his taxi through the gate and into the taxi que beside the ship. If that is the case, that would explain why the taxi drivers earlier in the morning had refused to just take us out to the railway station, but rather wished to drive us around all day. Our tour of the city had taken some three and a half hours, but we paid Ali for four hours, so he seemed happy. Squeekie did a bit of shopping at the vendor stalls inside the terminal building and then we reboarded the Rotterdam.

We had seen all of Mumbai we wished to see and, quite frankly, we have no serious desire ever to return. I was horrified by the poverty and dirt we saw here. I knew that India would be crowded and dirty, but nothing I had heard had prepared me for the truly abominable squalor we encountered. Naïve though this may sound, I was really surprised to see that there appears to be no effort on the part of the Indian government to aid their poor—or, for that matter, to try to cut back on their population by emphasisinf birth control or some such thing.

Our last contact with India on this voyage was the cultural show presented in the Queen’s Lounge in the evening, after which Rotterdam lifted anchor and sailed off to the west. I am glad I came to India, but I have no desire ever to return. . . . Now we must sail westward across the Arabian Gulf section of the Indian Ocean, headed northwesterly toward the Persian Gulf. Squeekie and I went forward to our viewpoint on Deck Six to watch as we sailed out of the harbour around ten o’clock in the evening. One last image visible though the darkness provided us with a reminder of why India is so clearly a land of contrast—glowing through the darkness was a flaming burn-off tower at an oil refinery on the southern side of the harbour. As the flame burned a sickly yellow colour dark smoke also poured into the air, just adding to the pollution in the atmosphere around the city and its harbour. This grungy flame provided an appropriate exclamation point to our departure. Good-bye!