Gateway of India
Basalt, raised to greet a king who came once, and the arch the last British troops walked out through. The sea knocks against the steps behind it, and the Elephanta boats leave from the same jetty.
The collection
Mumbai
Maharashtra · Seven islands that refused to stay separate
At five in the morning the boats come into Sassoon Dock and the day's price is settled by shouting, in the dark, before anything else in the city has moved. By one the same fish is on a table in Colaba with a linen napkin beside it. Mumbai is the distance between those two rooms, and the distance is about a mile.
Mumbai was seven islands until the sea was told to move, and it has been making the same argument ever since: that there is always room for one more. The city runs on a tide of its own — the fishing fleets out before dawn, the trading floors at nine, the last table at the Colaba end still going at two. Its grand buildings face the water because everything here arrived by it, and the Gothic and Deco terraces along the bay are the receipts. To stay well in Mumbai is to take a room above that noise and discover it sounds, from a height, exactly like ambition.
- When to go
- November to February, when the humidity finally lets go and the evenings on the bay turn cool enough to sit out in. December is the finest of it — clear air off the water and the city's whole season of music and gallery openings running at once. The June-to-September monsoon is spectacular from behind a window and miserable in front of one.
The landmarks
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus
A railway station given the architecture of a cathedral — gargoyles, stained glass, a stone monkey up a column — with several hundred thousand commuters a day passing through it and not one of them looking up.
Elephanta Caves
An hour across the harbour and then a hill. The caves are cut back into basalt, and at the far end a three-headed Shiva stands six metres high in the dark, worn everywhere but in the face.
The houses
Rates are quoted for your dates.
2 houses · In our order
Apollo Bunder, Colaba
The Taj Mahal Palace
On Apollo Bunder since 1903, with the Gateway of India across the road.
- Facing the Gateway
- Grand Staircase
- Palace butlers
