Elephanta Island Transportation

At the foot of the Caves Hill there are Rental Palanquins, which are are wooden chairs in order to carry you up the steps till to the Cave entrance. The steps are steep and for an aged person might not be feasible to hike those steps. Typically they charge something around INR 500 which would be carried by 4 bahaks (carriers). But if they see foreigners they might demand more. Best to negotiate on a price before getting on. I won't recommend it for fun only avail it if you are not physically fit. It takes tremendous physical exhaustion on their part to carry someone up.

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This is a new addition from my last trips to the island. The train takes passengers from ferry terminal to the foot of the cave mountain. roughly 30 people can fit into the carriages but few more can sneak in with INR 5 for one way.

Not sure how much will it be beneficial to reduce the time (Walking Turtle even can win the race) but it certainly creates congestion on the arrival deck. If you want to have fun better to do it one way may be while coming back.

Boats to Elephanta Island leave from Gateway of India. They leave every half an hour during the day, except Mondays when the caves on Elephanta Island are closed. I bought my ticket just by the boat and a return ticket was Rs 120 (June 2010). Be aware of hawkers trying to sell you tours to the island. It took just over an hour to go to Elephanta Island.

At Elephanta Island the ferry stops at the end of a long pier. It doesn’t take many minutes to walk to the stairs leading up to the caves, but if you want you can take a miniature train this short distance. Along the way there are people selling guidebooks and souvenirs.

When I visited Elephanta Island I met an Indian couple and luckily we travelled with the same boat back to Mumbai. First we sat on the roof, but when the rain again started to pour down we went downstairs. There were no available seats so we had to stand the rest of the journey. The rain continued to pour down and we docked by a ferry terminal. It turned out we couldn’t continue because of the weather conditions, it was to dangerous to go to Gateway of India. I was glad I was not alone as it was not to easy to go back to Colaba. We took a bus somewhere and when we were waiting for another bus we were told that Dockyard Road train station was near and we could get a train from there to CST train station. From CST I chose to walk back to Colaba. The rain was not so heavy anymore and I was wearing rain jacket and trousers.

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Elephanta Island is a popular day trip from Bombay for tourists and locals alike. Boats leave about every 15 minutes from Apollo Bunder, the dock by the Gateway of India and take an hour to get to the island. Some boats are a touch sturdier and faster than the others, and cost a touch more, but the difference is small. Once you arrive on the island, you'll have to walk the long pier, or take a slow train that drops you at the ticket office and local village. From there, you'll have to walk a long path uphill to get to the actual caves. If that's too much for you, you could hire four locals to carry you on a seated stretcher up the path.

Note: Allow yourself a minimum of two hours on the island, for a total of a four hour trip from Bombay.

These guys are waiting for you at the bottom of the steps that lead you up from the jetty to the cave entrance. They're there beside wooden chairs known as palanquins in order to carry you up the steps as there are well over 100 steps to the top, if not, over 200. This, of course, doesn't come for free and I suppose you would have to negotiate a price with them first. They look pretty bored so I don't expect they get a lot of business so you could hire one just for fun!

When you arrive on Elephanta Island, it's quite some walk from where the ferry drops you off at the end of the jetty to the caves. To solve this problem, there's a miniature train that runs along the jetty to near where steps are located that take you up to the ticket counter. The train only costs Rs8 but it was full up when I arrived so I didn't get a chance to ride on it and so had to walk. The train doesn't go that fast and to be honest it's probably quicker to walk than to hang around and wait for it to leave.

Ferries to Elephanta Island are available from behind the Gateway of India. I took a "deluxe" one which cost Rs120 return, Rs20 more than a standard ferry but I couldn't tell the difference between them. You can only return on a deluxe ferry if you set off on one. The ferries leave every 30 minutes or so from 9am-2pm and return from 1pm-5pm. Tickets are available from small booths near the Gateway of India on the Apollo Bunder. The ferry offers great photo opportunites of the Gateway of India from the ocean side. On the way to Elephanta Island, which takes about an hour, you'll pass by 'Middle Ground', a fortress, island and long jetties that connect ships to Butcher Island.

I’m not sure I can really call this a train, its more like a children’s amusement however I took it because it was organised for me and pretty much everyone else did too just for the novelty of it. It is not like the walk of the pier is any great length, in fact I walked it on the return as waiting for the train to come back would have taken too long. You pile into this little contraption which seats 2 comfortably each side of the wagons and chug at 2kms p/h at best. We had a little breakdown enroute and I was prepared to get out and walk but it kicked into life again and we finished the last few metres in style.