High and Mighty

The 5.05M high tide yesterday was the biggest tourist attraction this side of the planet. Varun Singh reports

The 5.05M high tide yesterday was the biggest tourist attraction this side of the planet. Varun Singh reports

On Thursday, when the high tide mark was 5.01m, thousands of Mumbaikars made a beeline for the waterfronts, found the time to stand beneath the boughs and stare as long as sheep or cows as poet William Henry Davies suggested so many decades ago.

So, yesterday when the tide was 5.05m at 2.35 pm, the highest this monsoon, the number of tide watchers upped to lakhs.

We Loved It: Gulshan Narang with son Yash came from Dubai to experience Mumbai's monsoon.

One of the many families present was the Sonis from Madhya Pradesh. "We were aware of the tides and came specially to Mumbai for the occasion.
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We watched the sea from Worli. We were told it's a once-in-a-lifetime event and didn't want to miss it," said Satyanarayan Soni, who was here with eight family members.
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Then there was Gulshan Narang, who came all the way from Dubai. "My son, Yash, has never been to Mumbai during the monsoons and we waited back to watch the sea in all its splendour.

I wanted him to enjoy the rains and so we postponed our trip to Kerala by a day," said Narang.
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For Mumbaikars Vasant and Vandana Bhadra, residents of Ghatkopar, a trip to town to watch the sea during the monsoon is a yearly ritual. Vasant, a sharebroker, bunked office to watch the tide.

"We have been watching the sea for 25 years and it's become a picnic. We carry a basket with chips, samosa and other goodies because if it starts raining and the trains stop running, we don't want to be stranded without food," said Vandana.



High Alert, but...

The BMC had earlier announced it would take maximum precautions on July 24 given the 5.05 m high tide.
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It was predicted that if it rained, the city would see a situation worse than that of 26/7 when Mumbai had drowned.

However, the MET department's predictions that it won't rain heavily in Mumbai came true and nothing untowardly took place.