Mumbai Things to Do Tips by NedHopkins

The Mathatma -- the Great Soul -- lived in this room, with his few earthly belongings, between 1917 and 1934

Leave a Comment

Though it was and is one of the nicer houses in Mumbai (Bombay), the room in which Mahatma Gandhi lived was small and spartan.

The Great Soul's room was on the first floor (second story) at the right in this photograph.

Leave a Comment

Sculpted out of solid rock nearly 2,000 years ago, during the Buddhist ascendancy in India, the Kanheri caves are both more numerous and more impressive than those on Elephanta Island.

Those on Elephanta are reached by sea, a 45-60 minute ferry ride. The 90 caves at Kanheri -- actually within the Mumbai/Bombay city limits -- are 60-90 minutes by car or autorickshaw from Colaba.

(The caves are technically in Sanjay Gandhi National Park. The younger son of Indira Gandhi, and grandson of Pandit Nehru, independent India's first prime minister, Sanjay was being groomed as his mother's successor when he died in an airplane accident. His elder brother, Rajiv, then became the heir apparent and, after his mother's assassination, became prime minister. Later, out of office and running for reelection, Rajiv too was murdered.)

Leave a Comment

One cannot help but be amazed by the labor and the dedication of the monks who carved the Kanheri temples and other structures out of solid rock -- or, for that matter, the temples and other structures at so many other places in India.

This, Kanheri Cave 90, is thought to have been a conference or class room, with sleeping cubicles around its sides.

Note how the monks would have sat, cross-legged, at the low-slung "tables" carved out of or into the rock.

Leave a Comment