Elephanta Caves

Our first target in Mumbai was highly recommended to us by Ani and his father: the Elephanta Caves. The caves feature stone carvings dating to the 6th and 7th centuries BC, and are on an island roughly an hour's ferry from the Gateway of India.

On the walk there from our hotel, we stopped by the Oval Maidan - a huge park where hundreds of people were playing cricket. We don't know how everyone kept everything straight, since there were probably 20 cricket games going on with fields that actually overlapped. Occasionally you would hear shouts to pay attention to the flying balls... Nearby was the Rajabai Clock Tower, which was modeled after Big Ben.

The ferry took us through the harbor, where we saw lots of empty freighters waiting for cargo. The island that we arrived at was a lush jungle, and we had a lot of work to do to get to the caves... hundreds of steps worth of climbing, with endless hawkers on each side of us the whole way. It's worth pointing out that despite this being nearly winter, it was nearly 90 degrees today!!

It took us maybe half an hour to finally reach the main cave, a huge hall carved out of a stone mountain supported by rows of giant columns. Within the hall were lots of stone sculptures carved into the cave walls. The sculptures were very large - some were probably 15 feet tall, some 20 feet - and depicted various Hindu religious events, mostly revolving around the God Shiva, the Destroyer. There was one of Shiva killing a demon, one of him marrying Parvati, one of Shiva being half man/half woman, and so forth. The largest of the carvings was simply one giant head - or actually, it was the head of a 3-headed god, a combo of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.

After the main cave, which was enormous and contained maybe a dozen such large carvings, there were four smaller caves that were much less decorative, but no less old.

Unfortunately, many of the sculptures were damaged or even partially destroyed. They are very old and totally in the open, so it's not too surprising. But fortunately, the government seems to have taken an interest in maintaining these caves with reinforced concrete, which Tina noticed because of a few areas of exposed rebar.

Also on the island was a large cannon, built there for defense purposes by the Portuguese. From the hill, you have a good view of much of the harbor, so seemed like a sensible choice for artillery placement. It's no longer functional, both ends have been filled in.

We grabbed a quick lunch at the island and were heading back to catch the return ferry when the trouble began. We bought a soda for refreshment purposes and, apparently, the monkeys on the island really like bottles. We're not sure if they're after the bottles themselves or are just crazed sugar fiends. Either way, a monkey came up to Tina and tried to grab the bottle. Tina yelled at it, it growled back, Tina kicked in its general direction. A local woman and man joined in on the yelling/threatening it with a large stick and it retreated. Ok, safe. A few meters later, a different monkey was more aggressive in pursuing the bottle... so Tina kicked it in the face. TAKE THAT! There was much growling, but it too retreated. We were making good time down the trail, with the docks in sight, and we thought we could make it... and then at the last minute, a monkey ran up from behind, grabbed the bottle before either of us could react, and bolted to the side and up a branch. And growled at us for good measure. Alright, monkey, you win this round. Enjoy the 7up.Read more