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Part 25: Boats, Trains, Temples and Caves

Mumbai, India

Oh cruellest of ironies. The breakfast buffet at The Trident is the most sumptuous we've seen. Acres and acres of ludicrously tasty food is laid out for consumption. It may not be served with the grandeur of the Lake Palace setting but it has all the trimmings and more besides. I watch forlornly as Coman, having missed out on dinner, tucks in with gusto. I nibble a slice of dry toast, drink my rehydration salts and swallow antibiotics. Throwing caution to the wind I have a cup of tea, a glass of apple juice and grab a couple of bananas for later. It's rock'n'roll madness, I tell you.

Despite the privations, we're as upbeat as ever. The pills are working and I'm no longer so bloated people ask when it's due, plus I've lost three kilos in weight, so we can remove the wide-angle lens from the camera. Today is also our final full day in India and there's still plenty to see, starting with a trip across the harbour.

Outside our hotel, the marathon runners have been pounding along since 6am, hoping to finish before the heat of the day drains all energy. Vijay meets us at 8.30 and takes us to the waiting car around the corner. As we walk we pass some of the slower ones still traipsing along. Considering we're pretty much at the start, this is a bit worrying.

As we drive from the Trident to the Gateway To India we pass the Oval, a huge park which is full of cricketers playing in the early morning light. While I stop to take a photo a ball comes sailing over the fence. I throw it back to much delight from those inside.

At the Gateway we meet Pauli, our guide for the day. A pleasant, slightly distant chap, he leads us around the monument telling us it was originally made of plaster of paris to commemorate the arrival of King George V. It looked so darn pretty they tore it down three years later to rebuild it in stone as permanent structure, a process which took nine years. And mighty lovely it looks too.

Behind it steps lead down to a rather rickety looking boat, one of hundreds of ferries that traverse the harbour each day, dodging enormous ocean-busting cargo ships, which toss these craft around in their wake. Oh happy happy joy, we're spending an hour on this doing exactly that. I'm not sure my stomach can take it.

The ML Galaxy which proudly declares its passenger capacity to be. "Fair season: 102. Foul season: 68", proves to be sturdier than it looks and we head out across the toxic-looking waters of one of the busiest ports in the world, chugging on the Arabian Sea to Elephanta Island, leaving behind us the impressive, but smog-filled, Mumbai skyline.

Despite the signs on board telling us No Photography by Order of the Indian Navy, we snap away at the hulking grey warships and aircraft carriers berthed at the dockyard. Near to our hotel is the Navy HQ with a billboard proudly stating: Power Packed Force For A Strong Nation. Only right we should grab a commemorative snap I feel.

After a very long hour we dock at the island and are suddenly confronted with a little kids' steam train. Pauli buys us each a 5 rupee ticket and we clamber on board and chug along for a few minutes until we reach the bottom of a long path, comprising 120 steps to the summit. Along the length of this path is a continuous array of stalls selling total tourist tat. But this time we're into the realms of Disney-esque models of Hindu gods in technicolour ghastliness, porcelain kittens smiling vapidly, ceramic tealight holders in various shapes (all of them elephants) and tea towels of such hideous persuasions that even the vendors themselves look embarrassed.

The Elephanta caves at the top of the climb are, however, jaw-dropping. Carved out of a huge slab of rock in the mountainside they are a UNESCO world heritage site and as stunning as the Egyptian temples of the Nile. Constructed at the turn of the 7th Century AD, they took 90 years to carve and are a many-pillared temple to Shiva.

Arranged around the walls are nine enormous carvings depicting the nine stages of Shiva's life - a Hindu stations of the cross in breathtaking detail. But as with all things of great and ancient beauty, ignorance has blighted their grandeur.

When the Portugese came along 1,000 years later, they discovered the locals using the caves to worship Shiva but thought they'd be much better as a place to store loot and weapons. So they defaced the carvings to put the temple out of action and spent their tenure as masters of Bombay (which spanned a measly nine years) storing their crap in these incredible sacred spaces. It's a crime of ignorance repeated nowadays by the Taliban blowing up Buddhas in Afghanistan. The one great carving the Portugese left intact was a triple-headed representation of Shiva which they mistakenly thought was the Hindu Trinity (Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva) and so superstitiously left it alone in case it upset their own Trinity. Be thankful for small mercies.

Pauli explains each carving in great detail, detailing the key moments in Shiva's life and then telling us a story we'd never thought to ask but explains so much. Lord Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, revered by Hindus everywhere regardless of which deity they worship, was the son of Shiva and his wife Parvatti. Ganesh, a beautiful-looking boy had never seen his father and one day Parvatti left her house and told Ganesh not to let anyone in.

Shiva turned up, Ganesh refused to let him enter so Shiva chopped his head off. Parvatti returned and distraught told Shiva he'd killed his own son. To rectify things Shiva said he'd bring him back to life but would have to give him a new head, using the first living creature he could find. At that moment an elephant wandered past so Shiva lopped his head off, stuck it on Ganesh and hey presto an elephant god was born.

Parvatti was furious. "My beautiful boy," she wailed, "you have made him a laughing stock!" Shiva, probably a bit exasperated by now, calmed his wife down and promised that from now on Ganesh would be revered by everyone around the world and held in greatest esteem. And to this day Hindus start all prayers, "Om Ganesha" (Lord Ganesh), before invoking the name of their chosen deity.

Shiva was a bit of a contradiction. As the above story illustrates he both destroyed and created life and in the Elephanta caves are two Shiva linga - large, polished domes of basalt, dug into softer blocks of rock. These linga are representations of Shiva's penis thrusting into a womb and on auspicious days women come and pour milk over them for fertility. In any temple to Shiva there is always a linga, even when no figures of the god are present, as these are the true spirit of Shiva. The clueless Portugese left these intact too, thinking they were just lumps of rock, meaning the sacredness of the temple was never really damaged, as the holy objects remained untouched.

We return via the toy train and another chugging boat, a minnow that charts a course through the vast iron beasts that power along beside us. At one stage we drift, stuck between two enormous tankers, their vast prows bearing down on us through the seas and foghorns blaring deafeningly as they blast us from their path. Rocking in their wake our skipper starts the engine again and we make it back to Mumbai's marina, thankful to still be in one piece.