Elephanta Caves!

Am back after a break. Have been reasonably busy in office and there have been holidays in between, both of which are good things, anyway we are back and it has been quite an eventful action - packed week in which we have travelled big time to Elephanta and Saurashtra (Rajkot, Junagadh, Gir and Somnath)!

The In - Laws arrived in the evening on the 13th, landed with loads of Biriyani and Mithai (notun gurer shondesh)! We had an early dinner and hit the bed early as we were going to Elephanta Island the next day and wanted to be slightly early.

We were NOT early on the 14th and left our Powai residence at around 10:00. Ritwika, my parents in law, Ritwika's Chhoto Mashi and myself, we made good time and reached Apollo Bunder at around 11:00. We bought tickets from the MTDC counter - deluxe launches cost Rs 120 per person for a return trip. Boats leave every 10 Minutes and the last boat leaves Elephanta at 5.00 PM. We boarded the first "Deluxe Launch" we got at around 1:15 PM and found out that the journey would last an hour.

The launch was pretty decent and comfortable, they have a scam running that they let you go on to the top deck if you pay a measly 10 bucks, throughout the journey we found out that you need quite a few 10 bucks as you will find out. My Father in Law and myself went up and clicked some pretty neat snaps of the Mumbai skyline.

The journey though it starts of well (with the spectacular view of the Gateway and the Taj) gets pretty boring, one is pretty much reduced to
a. Looking at ships
b. Sleeping
c. Trying to guess which of the many islands is Elephanta and how much more time it would take (it takes pretty much 1 hour so the readers of this blog can do without the guessing)

We reached Elephanta at around 2:15, and it was very hot, we decided to take the facility of a toy train costing us 10 bucks a head for a return journey (if anybody is going in Summer, one is advised to leave at 6 in the morning so you are back by 10). The train took us to a place where the steps leading up to Elephanta caves start, you can start climbing the steps after paying another Rs 10 which we did.

Once you reach the steps, you can either climb on foot, which is what we did, or you can take the option of going up to the caves on a chair bound by two sticks. Four strong Marathi youth can carry you to the mouth of the caves and back for Rs 500 a head. High price point but in the mid afternoon summer heat, that is an option people with high disposable incomes can well exercise.

We trudged along on foot. The path is flanked by hawkers on both sides selling t-shirts, beads and food items primarily. The path is covered by tarpaulin sheets and is pretty much infested by monkeys all around. The monkeys can get pretty aggressive and one is advised to keep ones bags very close by, bright colored bottles (fanta etc) seem to be a particular favorite. The climb to the mouth of the cave took about 25 minutes,15 - if you do it without breaks and window shopping and the same is well worth it for two reasons.

1. The view which we took in over some cold drinks at a cafe near the gate. Its remarkable and covers the Island, the jetty and the toy train track. Tourism India can do some rocking business by creating a high quality resort but I am sure there would be some very good reasons why that is not happening
2. The caves itself for the history and the architecture.

The sculpture of the three moods of Shiva is pretty awesome as is the Nataraja sculpture. You have to buy tickets to get into the cave (for Rs 10 again!), the same covers a trip to a museum which disappointingly contains nothing but pictures.

We then retraced our steps which was a lot quicker. We boarded the ferry back to Mumbai and left around 4, reaching Mumbai at 5 totally famished as we had not had lunch. It was Pongal, and we needed to have some sort of proper food which made us select Madras Cafe as our high tea destination.

The Bisibele rice, Pongal and Butter Poodi Idli at Madras Cafe, nicely rounded off a tiring but very worthwhile day.