Surprisingly despite getting to bed at around half one in the morning after my trip to the Taj, I was ready for breakfast at nine. Evidently my stomach demanded that I made recompense for having to leave too early the day before.
In most English hotels, the posh ones included, you usually get the cooked breakfast and the continental. If they’re really pushing the boat out, you may get the likes of Shakshuka.
This place has all that and then some. Lots and lots of Indian dishes, including South Indian dosas, uttapam, idlis. There are some Chinese ones including dumplings and this gorgeously simple vegetable bowl food. At least five types of breads, then fruit, nuts, seeds, cakes, doughnuts, ice creams.
It is worth getting out of bed for, however tired you are.
Today was New Year’s Eve, and although Maia had been hoping to sit at a rooftop bar on Juhu Beach at midnight, everywhere was booked up, so we compromised and had a meal in one of the restaurants there earlier in the evening.
There are some very swanky restaurants along Juhu beach. Apparently, a lot of the Bollywood hoi polloi has houses or apartments in this neighbourhood and so I was expecting quite a lot. However, my sister warned me that when she and my brother-in-law were last here, seven years ago during the monsoon season, they saw great bulldozers attempting to clear all the tons of litter that had accumulated on the beach.
Litter is everywhere in Mumbai. There seems to be a complete disregard for rubbish here amongst many people. They’re oblivious to how the place looks surrounded by all this plastic detritus, and many absentmindedly fling their own rubbish on the ground to join it. Historically, I guess, they would have thrown away banana leaves and disposable clay pots when they were on the go. However, plastic has been around in India for many decades, so I would have hoped that a clear education programme and more bins would have curbed their old habits.
I’ve seen slogans around saying ‘Clean Mumbai, Green Mumbai’, so not everybody is oblivious. But there definitely are not enough bins around, even in the more spacious southern parts of the city. If I had the power, I’d implement a programme whereby all school kids from the age of ten and above would have to go out for an hour a week to pick litter, and I’d get that to happen in the UK too as we’re quite bad at holding on to our rubbish (have you seen Formby Beach after a sunny day?). I’m sure if you’re the one who has to clean up after other people, you’d be less likely to drop it yourself.
Hersha said the beach looked great in comparison to her previous experience so that was something. It’s a lovely stretch of sand and a great place to watch the sun go down if the haze isn’t too strong. We ate at Tanatan, on the recommendation of my cousin who’d been to Mumbai recently, and we realised that the custom was not to order your own starters and mains, both of which were huge, but to share out a smaller number between you all.
That was great for Hersha and me as we like to try different dishes, but Maia, who is not keen on food that is too spicy felt a little hard done by. I’d recommend going just for the starters at Tanatan, as these were delicious. The mains are fine, but just a tad disappointing after our taste buds had been so tickled before.
Returning to our hotel, we kicked ourselves that we hadn’t put a bottle of fizz or two into our suitcases. Wine of any sort is very expensive here because it is an import, and we could only hail the start of 2025 with a few gins and tonics. But the bonus was that we did all stay awake, just about, which is more than I can say for me normally
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