Borivali National Park

Yesterday was a nice Sunday in the city. Most of it we spent in Sanjay Gandhi National Park (Borivali Park), which is located within the city and is a place annually visited by 2M people. Nevertheless it's a calm place to visit on Sunday's morning after partying the night before :)

Alyonushka

"Untouched" nature

And a lot of flowers! I love this winter!

Women selling fruits

Kids queuing to catch a train which goes around the park

Gandhi Temple

The guys I went to this park with (mostly aiesec interns)

The view on the city from that hill

Monkey - necessary attribute of any park in Mumbai, but never saw them on the streets here... yet!

Jain Temple - very neat comparing to the other Temple I visited recently (haven't written about it yet)

I must write a separate post about this religion later.

The most beautiful train station award goes to...

Mumbai!

Who said that the train station in Anwerp looks like a temple? Who thought that it's the best building in the city and something all antwerpeners are proud about?

Check this out: Mumbai train station - way more beautiful, grand and stunning.

Elephanta caves

Today we made a trip to Elephanta Caves which are on an island close to Mumbai.

View Larger Map

To reach it we took a ferry pretty much like the ones we were taking in Turkey some years back:

departing from the Gateway of India, which is just opposite Taj Hotel (you might know it for being attacked by terrorists in 2008) - two main highlights of Mumbai:

After one hour trip along the cost we reached the caves. They are full of sculptures devoted to the lord Shiva and made 12 centuries back. My camera couldn't capture them properly as it's quite dark inside and the walls are not illuminated. So the picture is taken from web:

That's how it looks like from outside:

Luckily we join a nice guide who was making a private tour for a couple from the US. We dared to ask for permission to join and it wasn't a bad move! Otherwise the alternative option was to hire a local guy in a baseball hat which looked rather suspicious than academic and I wouldn't rely not only on his knowledge, but on him in general. So if you ever end up there - make the right choice :)

Plastic cards

One thing that I didn't want to forget to write about, which still surprises me:

plastic cards (visa, etc.) are widely accepted here, at least in the restaurants/bars/clubs and in the shops. It is very convenient as the fee for these transactions is only 1,65% of the amount, when withdrawal fee is 3,5 euro (for my bank).

Still to improve: my swedish bank card doesn't seem to work for booking flights. I was told it might be because the card is issued abroad. So far nobody helped me with this issue. So if you know the way to book the tickets here with a foreign card - please let me know!

New Year's Eve in GOA

I left for Goa with some other 30+ people on 30th of Dec and came back just yesterday. It's impossible and it's a shame, but I haven't taken a single picture being in Goa. I'll try to get some from my friends later and update this post.

To start with, Goa is nothing I expected. Nothing I could imagine, and still felt familiar and as if I have been there before. As per overall stereotype Goa is "a place to be for the new year's eve", is " all about drugs-sex-rave", is "people high on weed and hash throwing up on the beach". I thought it would be exhausting. In reality it was chilled out, very much chilled out.

"a place to be for the new year's eve" didn't happen because I literally couldn't feel this ny's eve when it's +35C outside. I kept on forgetting about it before 12 am and I forgot that the new year began right after 12am.

"drugs-sex-rave" didn't happen due to different reasons. Perhaps I wan't looking like looking for drugs, so none of the drugdealers approached me at all for all 5 days of stay. From what I heard "you can't walk 10 meters in Goa without being offered some weed"- never happened to me!

Sex was rather something you'd initiate than coming naturally with the wind thing.

And I don't know where all the rave parties were held, but I heard anything but rave in there. Which is still fine, as I am not a big fan.

"people high on weed and hash throwing up on the beach": people were throwing up a lot, A LOT, but the reason was too much heat, not alcohol or bad food or smoking.

That's basically it.

Just few more things: we spent a lot of time on the scooter, driving around from one beach to another. It was awesome!

There are really tons of Russians. That's one of the stereotypes about Goa which is correct.

Pictures with (more interesting) comments to follow.