Bombay

Bay of Bombay from Malabar Hill. Foreground: Chowpatty Beach.

Bombay, or Mumbai as it has been renamed recently, is an island (formerly seven islands, slowly consolidated by land reclamation) joined by bridges to the continent, and looks like a peninsula that sticks approximately South into the Arabian Sea. Malabar Hill is a posh residential area in the north end of the bay, and it boasts the Hanging Gardens; just south is Chowpatty beach, where most activity begins at dusk. Further south and east the city is commerce on streets and markets, intermixed with housing, teeming with cars and scooters and pedestrians, and yes, the occasional cow. Near the south end of the bay (Nariman point), turning inland (east) one gets to Churchgate, and a little further northeast is the other large train terminal, VT. Across, the east coast of Bombay is mostly docks, but it still has, further south, the genteel atmosphere lent by the Gateway of India monument and the Taj Mahal hotel. This ultra-posh, most traditional hotel was built early this century by a prominent Indian industrialist, because, it is rumored, he was denied entry to a British-run establishment.