Bentley's Hotel Mumbai (Bombay)

28 th November 2008 Bentleys Hotel, Colaba, Mumbai Cloudy, hot and humid Today we woke up a reasonable hour (0930) given that we were in bed asleep at 1030 last night unable to keep our eyes open AGAIN. The room rate (1360 rps) includes breakfast so today we had coffee and toast delivered to our room. When I asked the guy on reception what the situation was now he said 'OK, normal again'. I said 'what about The Taj?', he turned to his buddy and asked him the question in Hindi and the response...

29th November 2008 Just to let you know we are safe and well, I will update the blog later today. Laters

29th November 2008 Bentleys Hotel, Colaba, Mumbai Cloudy, hot and humid I think we may have sorted out the jet lag now, we only slept for 12 hours last night! It would appear the hostage situations have been resolved. We managed to walk right down to The Gateway of India today and from there we could see the damage sustained to The Taj Hotel. Virtually the whole of the top floor has visible smoke damage from the windows and balconies. The press were out in their hundreds a very different situ...

We survived Mumbai Just a couple of days. Saw The Elephanta Island caves and the Prince of wales museum Very Busy and intimidating, butquite like it in the end Bartered for a drum from 500Rps to 150! Chuffed

I woke up at 8:30 AM so that I would be able to go get some breakfast and then try to find a new place to spend the night. I made my way to Cafe Leopold's...which is a very famous place in B-M. Shantaram (he has a book by the same name) got his start there and it's also a place where people come to scout foreigners for movies and advertisements. I was just hungry and was hoping to find some other foreigners. Boy, all I saw were foreigners! Unfortunately for me they were all coupled off or in ...

We woke up fairly early because we wanted to get breakfast taken care of and get one of the first ferries over to the island. We had breakfast at Leopold's again and then headed off to the Gateway of India where the boats left from. People here try to aggressively sell you everything. Yesterday I was just walking and minding my own business when some guy just put these white beads in my hand and tied some string around my wrist for good luck. I didn't even see it coming, man. Sneaky *******. ...

After Goa it was off to Mumbai.... our final stop before Istanbul. We decided on staying in another Lonely Planet recommended place (Bentley's Hotel) after a good experience in Goa only to be totally ripped off. I can't believe that you can be charged $40/night for a dirty shoebox of a room!!! It is so funny looking back at us tossing up whether we could afford to spend more than $8/night to stay in a 'luxury' Guesthouse in Vietnam and Cambodia. Day one in Mumbai was all ok but things went do...

Namaste!! Have finally landed in Bombay after months of planning....and hit chaos. Would not like to have to drive here, its scary enough in the back seat. Roads are shared with cows, beggers, children and the odd tourist - lanes dont exist, each for their own, he who is biggest and beeps loudest wins.....we`re on a roll. Went to Elephanta Island by boat from the Gateway of India, and paid far too much for a photocopied guide - rip off no. 1!!! (many more to come). The caves were interesting ...

"Horn OK please" is emblazoned proudly on the back of every vehicle on the road in Mumbai. Usually the 'OK' has its own floral design around it, just so everyone truly understand how 'OK' the horn is. So what does it mean? It is a message to the other drivers which ensures that nobody accidentally uses an indicator, or follows the lane markings or even really pays much attention to the road. Well I mean why would you, when the horn will do. And so began our taxi ride from the airport to our B...

Our taxi driver was a talkative one, but it was something to which we would get used to in our three days in Mumbai - everyone is a tour guide, everyone is trying to 'hire out' their services. Due to a truckers strike, there had been no petrol delivered to the gas stations, therefore the roads were pretty empty. A journey that would normally take 1.5 hours took 40 mins. Our driver delivered us to the hotel, where we were taken to another annex of the hotel on Alanna Marg. The room was better ...