Taj Mahal and Trident hotels back in business

This is how the swimming pool area at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel looked on Nov. 29, the day that Indian commandos finally declared the five-star hotel secure after it came under siege by terrorists on Nov. 26:

This is how the pool area looked Sunday, Dec. 21, when the hotel partially reopened just 22 days after the terrorist siege ended:

By 11 p.m. on Sunday, and amid security checks that included metal detectors and X-ray machines, people had checked into about 71 of the 268 rooms in the Taj’s tower wing. The 297 rooms of the 105-year-old heritage wing, however, might not reopen until March 2010, a Mumbai-based Morgan Stanley analyst has said.

The Trident-Oberoi, the other posh hotel that was attacked, opened its Trident portion on the same day with similar security measures. One hundred of the Trident’s 557 available rooms were reserved for Sunday night.

At both hotels, reopened restaurants were fully booked.

Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images, SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images