Taj Mahal Palace Hotel

We arrived in Mumbai to stay at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. This is a heritage, five-star, luxury hotel built in the Saracenic Revival style in the Colaba region. The Gateway to India is in front of it.

The hotel has 560 rooms and 44 suites with 1600 staff.

This became one of the main sites during the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Ten men associated with the terror group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba stormed the building. After three days, nine of the gunmen were killed during the Indian commando raid. One attacker survived. Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman, was executed in November 2012.

The group apparently wanted to strike a blow against Indian wealth and progress. Security was much tighter when we stayed there.

Security was especially tight in the airports where security have heavily armored placements throughout. I didn’t have enough nerve to take a picture of such a placement since photos were quite forbidden.

 

#mumbai

Leopold Cafe

We were doing a simple walk about during our first days in Mumbai. This is when we came across this cafe. I was not aware of its notoriety at the time.

We generally knew that the cafe was mentioned extensively in the novel Shantaram and its sequel The Mountain Shadow, which is why we stopped. It was particularly known as a popular hangout for foreign tourists.

The cafe became an early site of gunfire and grenade explosions during the 2008 Mumbai attacks by terrorists on Nov 26, at about 9:30 PM. The terrorists sprayed the restaurant with bullets from inside the restaurant from outside. They killed 10 persons and injured many others. The restaurant was extensively damaged during the attacks.

Afterward, the cafe became popular with many Indians to commemorate the spirit of defiance. The Leopold Cafe has preserved some of the signs of the attack as a memorial.

 

#india #mumbai #leopold