Elephanta island, Elephanta caves

During my last trip home/Mumbai, I visited Elephanta caves. The trip started from the Gateway of India, from where we took a ferry.

















Parde mein rehne do, parda na uthao...

One can see curtain like things hanging down on the right side of the Gateway of India. Thats coz renovation work was going on.

















The 3rd from right was our ferry

















Parking lot! There were other lots of ferries awaiting their turns

















There were other cool n fancy James Bond-type boats too

















October 12, 1492 was when Columbus discovered Amrica. This is the photo of the ship he sailed on. Yes, I am serious. See, it even has the name Columbus written on it(enlarge the pic). What more proof do you want :D

















We came across this really huge ship. It had a No Smoking sign on the deck. Dunno why..

















The side view of the huge ship

It took us about 30-40 minutes to reach the Elephanta island. A drop-point has been made for the ferry. Its a 10 min walk from the drop-point to the main island area. Or if someone is too lazy or acting too sissy like me coz of the sun, one can take the toy-train.

















This toy train was also used in the Bollywood flick 'One Two Three' (Advisable not to watch the movie if you have not heard of it. Somethings are better left unseen :) )

















This is where the main island area starts. Quite a few stalls for snacks, cold drinks were there.





















This is the photo with appropriate explanations. Enlarge the pic for better understanding.

We had to climb a lot of steep steps to reach the caves. On the way, we saw some of these creatures:

















I don't know what these birds are

















A chweet lil baby monkey wrapped by her not-so-chweet mother monkey

















A few more monkeys

















Another monkey doing some monkeygiri

















Inside the Elephanta caves

















Phoreigner taking photus

















Carvings inside the caves. Quite a few were broken

















More carvings
















A grand sculpture

















A pic with mom-dad in front of the sculpture. Pretty huge.

There are about 5 caves on the island. Following are pics of other caves

















The mouth of the cave

















Inside the cave.

















Me, posing in front of one of the caves


















Find me if you can!

We were really exhausted after all the cave-seeing in the scorching heat. We decided to eat at the MTDC restaurant on the island. The food was very ok-types. Dosas seemed the safest bet. Mom was a little disappointed that I had to eat dosa-idlis there too. coz I eat it almost everyday in namma Bengaluru.

















The view from the hotel was lovely.

On our way back, we saw boats lined in a row.

















Notice the different flags on the boats.

















That was one huge ship!

















The Gateway and the Taj hotel

















Me, the Gateway and the Taj hotel

















Back to safer lands. Thats the Tendulkar's on the right side in the pic. Gotta dine there the next time I go to Mumbai.

PS: Formatting this post was real irritating.