I began my 10 week adventure traveling around India by arriving in Mumbai where I spent my first week. Part of my reason for choosing India for my travels was to catch up with a friend I used to live with back when we were both students.
He is from Mumbai originally but studied in my hometown of Carlisle, a very small City in the north west of England which many people in the UK haven't even heard of - Random right?! Anyway, despite being good friends during college I had not seen him since he returned to India 12 years ago.
Much of my time in Mumbai then would be spent catching up with my friend and going out for meals and drinks etc. So it would be a very different experience to later in my trip when I would be solo traveling across this sub-continent.
Of course I did still do some sightseeing and plenty of street and travel photography, all of which you can also see in my latest video at the top of this page but I will also share the sights and my photos in this blog and also some photos which I couldn't fit into the video in some of my upcoming blog posts.
Dobi Ghat
Scroll along to see my photos from Dobi Ghat
Dobi Ghat is an open air laundromat where as many as 7,000 workers (or Dhobi's) hand wash, dry, bleach and dye laundry for 18-20 hours every day.
Dobi Ghat is actually a name used across India for open air laundry, but this one in Mumbai is considered to be the largest in the world and in 2011 was awarded a Guinness World Record for the most people hand washing clothes simultaneously in a single location - 496
It was constructed in 1890 and features rows of concrete wash pens, each with a flogging stone and although slowly more machines are beginning to appear, the vast majority of the work is still done by hand.
You can easily view Dobi Ghat from a viewing platform above , however if you get a guide like I did, you will be taken inside and shown around. Perfect for getting some photos of the people at work.
Mumbai's Tiffin Service
Mumbai's Tiffin service is a lunchbox delivery and return service which delivers lunch from homes and restaurants to workers in Mumbai. Many workers in Mumbai can live 50km away so the tiffin service is used to deliver home cooked meals to these workers. Each tiffin is collected from the home, taken to a central station where they are collected by these workers who then deliver them to the individual workplaces, mainly using bicycles. Each container is then returned back to it's home before the end of the day.
They use a series of codes and colours to determine the starting point and destination of each tiffin. It's a very impressive and efficient network and it is claimed that they never make a mistake!
Colaba Causeway
Colaba Causeway is a popular market and commercial street where you can buy shawls, jewellery, carpets, artefacts and much more.
For me it was just a fun place to take photographs and although the huge crowds made it difficult to pick out single moments in amongst the chaos, the bright light from the mid afternoon sun mixed with the shadows underneath the canopies made for some great contrasty scenes, which I love in street photography.
Mohammed Ali Road
My visit to India coincided with the month of Ramadan. One of the 5 pillars of Islam where Muslim's fast from sunrise to sunset. Mohammed Ali Road is one of the main places Muslims come to break their fast as the night falls. As well as tasty street food and vibrant atmosphere it was also another great place for some street photography.
This is just a taste of some of my photography during my stay in Mumbai. I took a LOT of photos. Mumbai for me as a photographer was a complete playground. So much chaos and madness to capture, so many people and so much happening. There's hundreds of photography opportunities at any given second.
I will therefore be posting much more of my photography from Mumbai over the coming days and weeks before then sharing more of my adventures across the rest of India. If you haven't already sign up to my newsletter to before to ensure you don't miss anything. There's a lot to come!