Mumbai 2013

Recently, my company went for a biz trip in Mumbai and the recommended hotel was The Westin at Garden city. It is a nice hotel and well equipped with facilities. The food is pretty good although it is a bit expensive to me. However, the location seems to be in the outskirts of the city. There is only 1 shopping mall behind. The hotel is surrounded by many old buildings and residential homes nearby. Overall, the stay is pleasant I would say.

The front gate

Lobby view

 Room view 1

 Room view 2

 Room view 3

 Nice tub

 Open concept dressing room

View from my room

Heavy traffic everyday

Fake sky from the lounge area

 Cool beer to end the day

The next thing is the mall located behind the hotel, a 5-10mins walk. A typical shopping mall but with sufficient shops and food. It is called Oberai mall. It is the Ganesha Festival when I was there and it is a big event over there. Below is the pics

 Name of the mall

 Inside view 1

 Ganesha statue in the mall lobby

Outside view

 Festival celebration 1

 Many people on the streets

Went shopping during my R&R days with my colleagues. We were bought to a little building that sells traditional and model clothing. The way it works is very different, rather picking the clothes ourselves, you state what you are looking for and they try to bring many design samples for browsing. And you can take your time to choose the clothes or ask the staff to bring more design. Every piece is new. Below is the pic.

 

First time 

Essential is the local taxis and tuk tuk taxis which is a scooter with cover. Most of the cabs we took doesn't go by meter. A fixed price most of the time. So you need to be aware of the estimated rates. However, tuk tuk cabs goes by the meter most of the time and it is cheap compared to normal cabs. They can't go long distance though.

 Cab

 Tuk Tuk cab

A must place to visit if you are in Mumbai is the Gateway of India. A nice heritage monument. Do take note of con mans and take care of your belongings.

View 1

View 2

Another nice building

Interesting building

Famous heritage train station

View 2

Time for food, I have always like to try Macdonald's from different countries. For India, they have vegetarian/Fish/chicken burgers. I only tried the interesting Masala chicken burger. It taste a bit like our local otah maybe due to the spices. Overall, it is not as nice as I thought.

Masala Burger

Another interesting dish is they call momo locally. It is very similar to Chinese dumplings but the dipping sauce and filling is different. The ones I had is chicken with cheese but it is very nice overall. And some sweet dessert which I don't know the names and the Masala tea which I like it personally.

Momo

Masala tea and misc

Can't remember the restaurant name but it sells Western to local cuisine. I ordered a tandoor style dish but it is really nice too. The well marinated fish chunk is big and boneless, it is grilled nicely. Below is the pics of the restaurant and food. It is located in the shopping mall.

View 1

View 2

Nice grilled chicken meat

my main concourse done tandoor style

Lastly, we tried out a local famous cafe that sells Chinese and local food. Of course, we tried the local ones since they are cheaper compared to SG. I tried the fish curry rice served with Basmati rice with a traditional glass bottle coke (been years seen I saw it in SG).

Nice nostalgic bottle

Fish curry with rice