We stopped in Mumbai, India, formally known as Bombay, on March 19, 2015, for an overnight stay. We were moored in Downtown Mumbai in Bombay Bay. We took a general tour of the city with our first stop being the Gateway of India, the original doorway to Bombay. The famous Taj Mahal Hotel is located next to the gate on the same large square. Our tour took us past many of Mumbai’s important buildings including the Town Hall and the Victoria Terminus, the train station which is an example of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture. Our next stop was at the Churchgate Railway station, where we went to see the dabba-wallahs, members of the Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association. Every day 4,000 of these intrepid entrepreneurs deliver fresh, home-cooked food from 100,000 suburban kitchens to offices in the downtown area. The ones we saw carry them on bicycles. Amazing that they never lose any or give them to the wrong person. It works like this: the housewife gives the lunch tin to A, he takes it a ways and gives to B and so on until it is at its destination. After lunch they reverse the order to get the tins back home. At the railway station, trains come and go on a strict time schedule with only 30 seconds to get on and off, thus the cars have no doors and are usually very crowded. Our last stop was at the Dhobi Ghat Laundry, an out door laundry with hundreds of washing stalls. In the crowded streets sacred cows could be seen walking the streets with their owners and handlers.
