Back in Mumbai: Elephanta Caves and Monkey Encounters

Today was our first full day back in Mumbai after returning from Walchandagar. (More importantly, it was Rachel’s 20^th birthday!) We started off our day early with the usual breakfast at the Y then took a 5 minute walk to the Gateway of India where we caught the 9 AM ferry ride to the Elephanta Caves. It was one hour of pleasant swaying and rocking motions that resulted in different reactions: pure enjoyment that showed on the faces of those girls who are prone to motion-sickness, sleepiness from others from the rocking motions at such an early time in the morning and excitement like a little kid in a candy store for those like me who are obsessed with ferry and boat rides. 

Gateway to India

Fleets of ships in the Sea of Oman

While on the boat we passed hundreds of boats in the harbor out of Mumbai, as well as some construction on the surrounding islands that we weren’t able to figure out the purpose of.  When the one hour ferry ride was over, we reached to the beautiful island of the Elephanta Cave that is located in the Sea of Oman. To get up to the caves, we needed to walk down a long walkway to the main island from the dock, and then climb 120 steps on a steep incline. The way up was lined with little stalls of shops selling every type of trinket you could possibly imagine. 

Stalls of lining the climb to the Caves

Following the trend of promptness that SWE has, the stairs up to the caves were pretty abandoned except for us 11 huffing and puffing girls. These stairs and the humidity that most certainly was about 200% allowed us all to experience sweating and overheating in a way that we had never experienced it before. For the rest of the day, we had a charmingly permanent shine and glow. To add to the pleasantries of the heat, the climb up was accompanied with the presence of some charming monkeys, who could be heard before they were even seen. But I will come back to those monkeys later...

We reached the top of the stairs!

The Elephanta Caves are dated back to the 6th to 8th century. It is named after a huge elephant statue that was found on the island by Portuguese navigators. This elephant statue is now in the Victoria Gardens Zoo in Mumbai. It consists of 5 different caves on the west side of the island,  but the 1st cave is the main cave with the most intricate carvings on a platform with 27m sides, as seen below. The other caves were in different stages of erosion over time, with cracked statues and worn away stone walkways. The photos below show some of the scenes we saw, including the three headed Mahadeva, the dvarapalas gate keepers, and enormous reliefs of Shiva. It was a breathtaking site to see due to the sheer size and detail in the work. 

Main carving of the three headed bust of the Mahadeva

Giant carved statue of the gate keepers, dvarapalas, guarding a temple in the main cave

Entry way to the second cave

In the main cave

On the way out of the caves many of us stopped to do some shopping and browse the stalls of trinkets. Coasters, an elephant door hanger, cards, chess boards and bags were some of the things us ladies purchased on our walk down and we were all able to practice our haggling skills. When four of us neared the end of the stairs, we decided to continue on and wait for the rest of the group at the bottom. 

(I will recommence the monkey stories). Already earlier in the trip when we were walking from the main caves to the other ones, the monkey pictured below began to charge an unsuspecting Jennifer who was walking near the railing at a casual full speed run. Needless to say, that began the encounters with the monkeys and it was a hate-hate relationship from the beginning. Now, when we were coming down the stairs to finally leave the stall stores, both sides of the stairs were flanked with monkeys. We decided to not make eye contact with the monkeys, but unfortunately one monkey took a special interest in Shobhita. It tried to reach and steal her bag from her while baring its pearly whites while the other monkeys surrounded us. Before things got ugly, Shobhita was removed from the scene and we walked together quickly so that the monkey did not single her out. All in all, the monkeys were not the highlight of our trip. 

Our charming monkey friends 

We were all ready for lunch, so we rushed to catch the next ferry ride so that we did not have to wait an extra 30 minutes on the island. On the way to the ferry an adorable cow made its way through the crowd, hip bumping men out of its way and demanding its space and attention-- I have what you could describe as an obsession for these cows, so I was clearly stopped to snap a picture, which you can see it pose for of course. 

The sassiest cow I encountered on this trip.

After returning to the Gateway and exiting the ferry, we returned to Café Mondegar for a second time this trip, where we had an Indian/Asian/American/Italian lunch accompanied by welcoming air-conditioning and music from Coldplay, the Beatles, and other English classics that we suspected were put on because of us. The theme was a twist on a 50s diner, and the murals on the wall were certainly eye-catching portrayals of police officers, bar maids, and farm hands. Once lunch was over we continued on to the Taj Hotel (which was more like a palace) to shop in their jewelry and pashmina stores. It was reaching very hot temperatures, so the group split up into smaller groups and did some shopping or henna or just general nap time, and we came back together at the night for dinner. The night ended more calmly than usual after an early day at the Caves, but we were all excited/sad to return to our beds for our final night's sleep in India before we all return to the US or continue on to Nepal.