22 Dec 2022
We had a great time with our guide, Tiger, and our driver. They modified the tour to meet our need that we not be on tour for more than four hours; we certainly could have taken in more, but we had been on a cruise for two weeks and were pretty tired. In addition, we had taken a tour on the prior day through the cruise line. Still, they took us to some great places other than the ones we had seen on our prior tour (e.g. hanging gardens, Marine Drive), including the staging area for the vendors who distribute custom-ordered lunches to clients by bicycle, the incredible outdoor laundry market, the Portuguese fort on the beach, past the skyscraper home of the country’s richest man, past Ghandi’s home , and over an amazing bridge. There is s an indoor option to go into the Ghandi home (now a museum) would probably be worth it). Tiger is a native and was willing to share all kinds of information about the educational system, religious traditions, life in the slums, etc. He also negotiated a short ride for us on one of the open air taxis that are about the size of a large golf cart. If you take this tour (and you should), be prepared for Mumbai traffic—jammed, slow, harrowing at times, and noisy; the horn honking is incessant. We had an ambitious pizza delivery guy on a scooter crash into us; fortunately, no one hurt except, perhaps, the pizza.