Yet more Mumbai photos (dial up warning); some tourist stuff
My wife and I went down to Colaba (the very posh tourist neighborhood at the southern tip of Mumbai) yesterday.
This is the Gateway of India. It was built for Queen Victoria's jubilee, but when she visited Mumbai it wasn't finished yet, so they (no kidding) threw up a cardboard model for the ceremony. Only a few decades later, they were the site of the last parade of British troops as they left a soon-to-be independent India.
These are the old barracks that now house some of Mumbai's city government. Most of Colaba is in this colonial style. Very beautiful. But falling apart.
The beautiful Taj Mahal hotel, site of the horrible 2008 attacks (among other places). I'll confess I went in there to go to the Starbucks in the lobby.
This is the St. Ignatius church, one of the oldest churches in Mumbai. It was built by the Portuguese in 15-something.
Back to my neighborhood, here are some other things I've found:
The G. T. Pork Shop. Sadly, it seems closed down.
Green coconuts for sale on the street. The guy takes a machete, chops off the top, and gives you a straw to drink from it with. Yum.
A shrine originally to Lakshmi, now to Bal Thackeray, the creepy Hindu racist guy.
Note the direction of the swastika.
A tent city (I didn't want too tight a shot since these people have little enough privacy as it is). About a quarter of Mumbai's population lives in tents like this, and hope one day to build or move into an illegal but permanent lean-to (however, the slums have waiting lists -- I wish I were kidding).
And, to end on a more positive note:
Fresh veggies for sale on the street. Indian students in America often express amazement that fresh vegetables are more expensive than a McDonalds meal in the US. A half-kilo of the okra would cost about 20 rupees (25 cents; about half a day's wages for a day laborer), while a McDonalds Spicy McPaneer (basically a cheeseburger made only of cheese) costs 200 rupees ($3, well out of reach of a poor person except for a special occasion), and the McMaharaja (a chicken and potato version of the Big Mac) costs 400. Then again, several of those visiting students also connected that to the equally surprising to them fact that often poor people are fat and rich people are fit in the US; the opposite is usually true in India. This also speaks to Indians' amazement at how equally divided wealth is in the US, which sounds strange to our ears but makes some sense once you've seen India (the entire US income distribution fits in the top 4% of India's income distribution), but that's another OP for another day...
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And what variety...grand buildings, homeless folks and their tent city...ancient historical buildings...
Thanks for sharing!
Those are fabulous pictures. The greatest joy of my life, after my family, is to see travel pictures and watch travel shows on TV; it just knocks me out to contemplate all the wonder and variety of the world. Thank you so much for posting these, especially with the commentary. 
People migrate from rural India to live in those tents because they can get a little of that .com money delivering those vegetables (or whatever). 
is through your picture stories 
i told then that you don't go to india to have fun. it was amazing and interesting, but fun?
i had a really hard time taking a hot shower knowing that was more water than most indian families used in a month. seeing people on the street like that was just sad.
seeing poor people donating rupees and buying flowers to build marble temples while their babies starved was something that made me kinda nuts.
we also went to pune (hubby's work uses "cogs"
. best food we had the whole trip was in the congnizant cafeteria. saw plenty of money trickling down there, but people still didn't think much of the electricity going in and out. just the usual.
i was very glad to get back home. brought back some stories, tho, that is for sure.