The Arabian Sea

On Labor Day, Leonard had the day off work, while the kids still had school.  We decided to take Ali on a date and the 3 of us set off to take a walk by the sea.

Looking north towards the Bandra-Worli sea link.

Mumbai has lovely artwork at many of their intersections.  I love this cheerful tulip and deer.

Even though this mermaid was becoming an old maid, I loved her.  Unfortunately, she is no longer with us.  She has been replaced by a red concrete "jack" sculpture.

The "jacks" in the sculpture are made out of these concrete tripods in the bottom left corner and they're just not as pretty as a mermaid!

We found a new friend.  We've also seen artwork of him at the mall, so we've gathered he's a comic strip character.  Now we need to find out his name!

A beautiful (albeit HOT) day out after a long monsoon season!

Ali wouldn't look at the camera so I asked her to blow Daddy a kiss.  She misunderstood and planted a big one on me instead.  I'm so glad Leonard captured this sweet moment.

And this moment too, look at our sweet lovey smiles!

I wasn't surprised that there was no sand along the beach, but I was surprised there was this lovely ground cover.

That had these lovely flowers.  Morning Glory perhaps?

Looking south towards Worli.

We found our friend again!

Soon our path was blocked by a woman drying her laundry.  We assume she washed them in the sea, but they were remarkably spotless.

We looked over and found others also washing their laundry in the sea.

A broader perspective.  This is India, the ultra-rich living right next to the ultra-poor.  There are no "rich" neighborhoods and "poor" neighborhoods, everyone all lives right on top of each other.  A little further down we saw another young family with several kids sitting on the rocks near the path under umbrellas.  A little boy caught my eye and smiled at me.  I smiled back and soon we were swarmed asking for money.  Len gave a little note to one of them and of course, that just brought more seekers.  We told them we had to move along.  Later on we found another group of teenage boys who started asking us for money and when we said no, they asked for chocolate (which just means any candy here) of which we had none.  This is the first place I want to go as Cupcake Lady.

Len captured this photo of the top of Antilia, the most expensive personal residence in the world (approximately $1 billion).  The home of Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, and a few of his family members.  It's 27 stories, has 3 helipads, and a staff of 600 people to maintain it!  We can see his home from our apartment.

And in contrast a row of slum houses.

Here they are from the other side.  Slum houses do not have bathrooms, there are communal bathrooms instead.  Walking by their's about burned my nostrils off it smelled so horribly.  We have passed other public bathrooms that smell just as bad.  I can not believe what it must be like to use them.  There is a campaign here entitled, "the right to pee."  It is heartbreaking.  Men are not charged to use the bathrooms, because they are most likely to use the urinals which don't require toilet paper.  However, girls have to use toilet paper regardless of what they go, so they are always charged to use the bathrooms.  It is unfair that girls have to pay to pee, this should be a right for all!!  All of us with a flushing toilet in our own homes are truly lucky!

I loved this graffiti.  Girl power!

Here is some more colorful wall art.

In a long median of the road were these lovely flowers.  Beauty is everywhere if you look for it!

Across the street were these super tall trees with these flowers in their branches.  I love my camera's zoom!

Getting closer to Worli.  You can see some fishing boats anchored in the harbor, the skyline, and the Haji Ali Dargah mosque.

We saw one man swimming out to his boat, then this boat full of some fishers.

The mosque is out on an island with a thin peninsula that is available to walk on during low tide.

There were many visitors to the mosque, and even more walking to it on the peninsula.

I love the intricate stonework and can't believe it's been standing for almost 600 years (that's older than the Taj Mahal!).

We didn't walk out to it on this visit, but we will go back someday.

This poor girl only had 3 paws, but she was scampering around the rocks for a while until she decided to take a rest.  All of the dogs are so thin here and you can always tell the females as their mammary glands hang down really low.

Palm trees always make me smile.

This crow made Len smile.

Then we came across some of his friends having a nutty snack.

Ali was getting so hot and tired, but she was a trooper.  We basically walked from the Bandra-Worli sea link all the way down to the Haji Ali Dargah.  Another memorable moment was hearing a horrible car crash.  We didn't see the actual collision, but it was right beside us and we saw the aftermath.  It was the first one we've witnessed and luckily no one was hurt.  It sure was loud though!  At the end we got in a taxi and headed off to the second part of our date...