Mumbai’s south tip is a compressed museum of imperial grandeur, where the Gateway of India faces the Arabian Sea and Victorian Gothic universities share streets with the most chaotic bazaars in India. This mumbai walking tour companion is paired with “Mumbai Walking Tour – Colaba | Gateway of India 4K HDR” — a 4K HDR walk through south Mumbai’s Colaba neighbourhood that shows the city’s colonial layer in detail.
About This Walking Tour
This 4K HDR walking tour covers the Colaba neighbourhood of south Mumbai — the peninsula at the city’s southernmost point where the Gateway of India arch faces the harbour and the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel stands as one of the great grand hotels of Asia. The walk covers the Apollo Bunder waterfront, the Colaba Causeway market street, and the broader south Mumbai heritage precinct.
The Colaba area is the starting point for south Mumbai’s heritage walk, which extends north through the Oval Maidan and its surrounding cluster of UNESCO-listed Victorian Gothic buildings — the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya museum (formerly Prince of Wales Museum), the University Library and Rajabai Clock Tower, and the Bombay High Court — to the Flora Fountain roundabout at the heart of the colonial Fort district. Crawford Market (now Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market), just north, represents the beginning of Mumbai’s bazaar culture.
The walk from the Gateway of India to Crawford Market covers approximately 3 kilometres through some of the most historically significant streetscape in India.
Highlights of South Mumbai
The Gateway of India, completed in 1924, is a 26-metre basalt arch built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to India in 1911 — the first visit of a British monarch. The arch overlooks the harbour and is the point from which the last British troops departed India in 1948. The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel immediately adjacent was built in 1903 by the industrialist Jamshetji Tata, reportedly after he was refused entry to one of Mumbai’s European-only hotels. The hotel was the site of the November 2008 terrorist attacks; its facade bears discreet plaques commemorating the event.
The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (Prince of Wales Museum, 1923) is designed in the Indo-Saracenic style — a British attempt to blend Western architecture with Mughal and Hindu elements — and houses one of India’s finest collections of art and antiquities. Across the Oval Maidan, the University of Mumbai Library and Rajabai Clock Tower (1878) is a Gothic Revival building designed by George Gilbert Scott, the architect of St Pancras Station in London.
Crawford Market (1869), designed by William Emerson and with an entrance frieze created by Lockwood Kipling (Rudyard Kipling’s father), is a neo-Gothic covered market that was for generations the central food market of Bombay. Today it sells fresh produce, pets, and dry goods in a Victorian iron-and-glass structure.
A Brief History of Mumbai’s Fort District
Mumbai was created from seven islands progressively joined by land reclamation from the 17th century onward. The Portuguese held the islands from 1534 before ceding them to the British Crown in 1661 as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza when she married Charles II. The British East India Company developed the Fort area as a trading and administrative centre; the Victorian Gothic buildings that now line the Oval Maidan were built in the 1860s–1880s during the cotton boom that followed the American Civil War, when Bombay became the world’s most important cotton-trading port.
Mumbai was the capital of British India’s Bombay Presidency and the principal port of entry to the subcontinent. The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel opened in 1903 and quickly became the centre of Bombay’s social life. Today Mumbai is India’s financial capital and most populous city, with an official population of 12 million in the city and over 20 million in the metropolitan area.
Practical Tips
The Colaba area is served by the Churchgate and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CST) railway stations, both within 2 kilometres. Local trains on the Western and Central Railway lines are the fastest way to travel; taxis and app-based cabs (Ola, Uber) are widely available. India uses the rupee. The Gateway of India is free to visit and always open. Museum admissions range from 100–650 rupees. Mumbai’s summers (March–May, with monsoon June–September) are extremely humid; October–February offers the most comfortable walking conditions.
Best Time to Visit
November through February is Mumbai’s cool dry season and the most comfortable time for extended outdoor walking. The monsoon season (June–September) makes outdoor walking difficult but dramatically transforms the city’s appearance. Mumbai’s Ganesh Chaturthi festival in August–September is extraordinary but very crowded.
Watch & Explore More
The full 4K HDR Colaba and Gateway walk is embedded above. Explore more India content at the @walkingtoursvideoscom channel. Related posts: Delhi’s Old Delhi Chandni Chowk walk and Varanasi’s Ganges ghats walk.