We slept in today until 7 a.m.! After breakfast we set off, by the waterfront where we were now unable to see clearly the inlet that we saw yesterday due to smog. Sections of the newly constructed Mumbai bridge (Whori Sea Link) were barely visible today. This bridge connects the suburbs of Bandra in the west to Worli in the south. The bridge is constructed of concrete decks with "cable-stayed" spans.

Our first destination was a tour of "Dharavi" - one of the many slums in Mumbai. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures in the slum, so the only pictures we have are from outside and a picture of the finished plastic product. The slum is split into 2 sections: one is the heavy industry and the second is the light industry and residences. It is reported that half of Mumbai's 22 million residents live in slums. Our slum tour guide grew up in Dharavi and is now studying accounting in University, one of many success stories. While they are poor, they all work very hard, young and old alike, and are immensely proud of all their accomplishments. In the industrial side, we were primarily toured through the plastic recycling primarily. The plastics are first washed, shredded, washed again and melted. Once the plastic reaches a certain consistency it is pulled like taffy into long threads and cut into pellets when cold. They were proud to show us a home-built plastic shredding machine. They buy the plastic for Rs 5 per ton and sell the pellets for Rs 60 per ton. Their work areas are small, poorly illuminated and very little in the way of ventilation. The light industry consisting of leather working, carving, tailoring, weaving are typically done in the lower sections while the residences are above. Dharavi has become famous through the movie "Slum Dog Millionaire" movie, although the residents are not happy about the way they were portrayed; they now do tours, as with us, in effort to gain better understanding and respect.

Dabawallahs ( a person who carries a container) a term applied to thousands of workers who deliver about 200,000 boxes of fresh cooked lunches to the city office workers every day. The members of the "Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust (NMTSCT) or dabawallahs - 5000 strong faithfully deliver fresh and lovingly prepared homemade lunches for fathers, husbands or sons. The lunches, carefully made each morning by a faithful spouse or daughter, are delivered to the nearest train station where they are color coded. These codes tell them where the lunches are to go and prior to final delivery the box will pass through at least a dozen different hands. We were able to observe the final sort - down town - where the individual boxes were sorted on to bicycles for delivery.

We have lunch at Veda Restaurant, purportedly one of the finest places to eat in all Mumbai. It was very good. After lunch we proceed to the Crawford Market. The State of Maharashtra has a very significant agricultural community of which they are justly proud especially crops of papaya and mango which are exported worldwide. Crawford Market is a British style covered market that is separated into aisles - of polished fruit and vegetables, others of nuts, seeds and spices, some whole sales and the meat hall which is not for the faint of heart. The market is very large, colorful, crowded and noisy. We see many glimpses of western influence such as 'Pears soap' and adult diapers. We, of course, were a bit of an oddity and we found as we were taking pictures of the market and people, the locals were in turn taking pictures of us. On the exterior, there are amazing "friezes" as designed by Rudyard Kipling's father, Lockwood who incidentally was the principal of the Bombay School of Art in 1865

Some of us then did a historical walking tour, observing some of the historical buildings in Mumbai. One of our first stops was Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (Victoria Terminal), designed by F.W. Stevens and built in 1887. It was "succinctly defined by the journalist James Cameron as "Victorian-Gothic-Saracenic-Italianate-Oriental-St. Pancras-Baroque"". This train station moves approximately 2 million people on nearly a thousand trains every day and most are so intent on their daily transit that they do not notice the decorative detailing. Chhatrapati Shivaji is another UNESCO heritage site which is now under threat as included with the protection is a large tract of land that is desired for commercial enterprises. Other historical buildings, not already mentioned, are Mumbai High Court Buildings, University Buildings, Bombay Municipal Corporation Building, the Maharashtra Police Headquarters and the David Sasson Library Building built in 1870. In the middle of our stroll, we became more familiar with a Banyan Tree - which not only lines but sometimes takes over full blocks. Here, like in Delhi, the trees are numbered and if removal is required they must be replaced.

The traffic today is a particular nightmare as there is a bit of a strike going on. Locals from communities directly adjacent to Mumbai were striking as they feel that many of the northern laborers are getting preference and they would like assistance to offset the imbalance.