Mumbai or Bombay?

Whether you’ve heard of Mumbai – the cosmopolitan metropolis of India – or Bombay an old Colonial-era hub, and you don’t know which one you’d want to visit on your trip to India, well you’ll be glad to know that they’re one and the same.

This is the largest city in India and the capital of Maharashtra state. The initial Bombay was a comglomeration of seven islands which over time were joined to form an island city.

The culture of the city is something of a wild blend of things as well; it’s a bit of Hollywood, a lot of poverty, mayhem and order in various amounts, with some Hinduism and Islam thrown in, just gives you the slightest of ideas of what this place actually is like.

Mumbai is the country’s financial powerhouse, a mass of humanity in a constant and frantic flux. There are shiny skyscrapers and malls which pop up around and amid the slums and general grinding poverty. The city is slowly marching towards a newer world, but half the population still lives in slums, and the religious-based social unrest is constant background noise to all the insanity.

You can only start to appreciate the city’s allure only after the initial shock of what Mumbai looks like at first glance.

There is a wealth of Art Deco and grand colonial relics to discover, a plethora of different temples, bazaars and the occasional spiritual bastion of tranquility. This is a place where you can dine at some of the finest restaurant in the country while then having fun at some ultrachic bar, all the time being surrounded by pollution and noise – it’s quite exhilarating.

Depending on the amount of time that you have at your disposal, you could always employ our India car rental services in order to go visit the entire city, as well as venture beyond its rather large borders.