For greater than a century this place has impressed an impassioned, virtually spiritual devotion. So there have been those that fretted the lodge would by no means be the identical once more following the terrorist assaults of 2008. But she re-emerged extra splendid than ever.
The impeccably done-up suites within the Heritage Wing embrace one named after sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. It’s a hovering duplex, aquiver with mild that bounces off the Arabian Sea and filters by way of stained-glass home windows. There, gleaming in a hermetically sealed vitrine, is Shankar’s lacquered concerto sitar. On the wall alongside it’s a portrait of him and his Scouser mate George Harrison. For it was right here, on this very room, in September 1966 that the spiritually inclined Beatle learnt to play the instrument. ( or a foul factor, you need to resolve for your self.)
Outside is Mumbai, in all its mad magnificence and muddle. The Taj is on the metropolis’s southern tip, in Colaba, the previous British quarter. The neighbourhood, nonetheless redolent of the Raj, is present process a renaissance. Whip-smart boutiques corresponding to Bungalow Eight and Bombay Electric vie for commerce with toothless hawkers and stalls flogging incense and dodgy antiques. Colaba’s louche, legendary Leopold Café has the very best people-watching on the town; however new restaurant The Table is the place to go for a salted-caramel-ice-cream sundae so good it instructions a species of devotion comparable solely to that of its close to neighbour, the Taj Mahal Palace.