Though it seems inconceivable today, Mumbai got off to a slow start as a collection of seven offshore islands inhabited by Koli fisherman who worshiped Mumbadevi or Mumbai, subsequently corrupted to Bom Bahia (beautiful bay) by the Portuguese to whom the islands were ceded in the early 16th century. In 1661 the Portuguese handed over it to Charles II of England as part of the marriage dowry of Catherine of Braganza.

Later, Charles II offered them to the East India Company for a small monthly rent. The Company commenced reclamation work and within a few years the harbor was regarded as the fairest, largest and securest in this part of the world.

The legacy of Mumbai has been a dynamic mixture of cultures, an outward looking pragmatism, an easy tolerance and an engagingly cosmopolitan attitude . Film directors, entrepreneurs, merchants, hustlers and pop-singers all swirl around the packed streets of Mumbai where red double-decker buses, taxis, auto-rickshaws and bicycles jostle for their inch in congested space.

Though Mumbai's streets are pan demonic, its buildings, if you can find both space and time to appreciate them - are a treasury of Victorian architecture. Intent on stamping their presence indelibly on this corner of India, the Victorians rang the changes from the neo-classical Town Hall, through to the Byzantine Churchgate Station, and the Gothic Victoria Terminus, thought at the time top be 'much too magnificent for a bustling crowd of railway passengers'.

Eastwards from Mumbai, beyond the Western Ghats, stretches the arid Deccan plateau, once home to the powerful Marathas who fought the Mohguls tooth and nail for the area. Long before this, between the 2nd century BC and 7th century AD, flowered a very different civilization, best seen in the famous cave temples of Ellora and Ajanta near Aurangabad a forty-minute flight from Mumbai.


A few miles further on and a world away from dictorial whim lie the thirty-four Buddhist, Hindu and Jain cave temples of Ellora, scoped from the west face of a basalt escarpment and extending for a mile and a half. Begun by Buddhist monks in the 7th century, and gradually supplemented by Hindu and Jain priests about 9th and 10th centuries, the result is a vibrant panorama of Indian mystical sculpture. On no account miss cave 16, the Kailasa temple, Named after Shiva's mountain home in the Himalaya, it was carved from a single rock the size of the Parthenon in Greece, begun from the surface and chiseled down to the floor by 7,000 stonecutters over 150 years.

Western India keeps its secrets well. A mere one hour flight from Mumbai is Ahmedabad the principal city of Gujarat which spans the history of India in a way no other state can rival. At Lothal, a two hour drive from Ahmedabad, lie ruins of an ancient Harappan port which traded with Egypt and Mesopotamia nearly 4,500 years ago. Over the last forty years, excavations have revealed a massive brick-lined dry dock, a planned city on a grid pattern with an underground drainage system, public and private wells, and houses with hearts and baths. At the other end of the historical and baths.

At the other end of the historical spectrum, Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, was born at Porbandar and founded the Sabarimati Ashram a few miles north of Ahmedabad in 1915. It was from here he launched his epoch-making civil disobedience movement which led to India's independence. Gujarat has excellent Arabian Sea beaches at Nagoe, Ahmedpur Mandvi, and Chorvad where the maharajah's summer palace has been turned into a comfortable resort hotel. For a glimpse of the truly exotic however, the walled city of Bhuj has few equals. Situated in the Rann of Kach, a part of the Thar desert and described by Sir Alexander Burnes in the 1830's as " a space without counterpart in the globe", it is surrounded by nesting flamingos from December to February.

On western India's corner lies the most popular Indian destination of Goa. An enchanting fusion of Indian and Mediterranean cultures and peoples, a necklace of gorgeous beaches that runs for nearly 65 miles from Arambol Beach in the north to Palolem Beach in the south, Goa is but a short flight from, Mumbai.

The old capital, Velha Goa, was the first Portuguese possession in Asia. Intended to dominate the spice trade, it subsequently rivaled, and was granted the same privileges, as Lisbon. Roman Catholics flooded in, building a host of magnificent churches such as the Basilica de Bom Jesus which contains the tomb of St. Francis Zavier.

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