Bhat Bazaar and Dana Bunder Grain Wholesale Lanes

A few hundred metres inland from the old harbour wall at Masjid Bunder, the lanes of Bhat Bazaar and Dana Bunder carry on a trade older than most of the buildings that lean over them.

• The names are plain description rather than poetry: bhaat is rice, dana is grain, and a bunder is the wharf where country craft once unloaded.
• Rice, wheat, tur and moong dal, jaggery, dry fruit, tamarind and whole spices still arrive here in bulk, are weighed, re-sacked and hand-carted onward to the retail markets of the city.
• This is a working wholesale district rather than a bazaar arranged for visitors, and that is exactly what makes it worth an hour of your morning. The rhythm is the attraction.
• Between roughly seven and eleven on a weekday morning the lanes run at full tilt: porters shouldering heavy sacks, wooden handcarts negotiating gaps barely wider than themselves, brass pan-scales swinging in doorways, and commission agents calling rates from first-floor offices reached by steep wooden staircases.
• Ground floors are stacked shoulder-high with jute, and the air changes every few metres from the molasses sweetness of jaggery to the dry heat of red chilli and the resinous edge of asafoetida.
• Much of the trade has been in the hands of Gujarati, Kutchi and Marwari mercantile families for generations, and the shopfront signboards, layered and hand-painted and often in more than one script, are a readable record of that history.
• Treat the visit as a walk rather than a shopping trip.
• Prices are quoted in bulk and most godowns will not break a sack, although dry-fruit and spice merchants on the fringes sometimes sell in household quantities.
• Keep to the edges, because loaded handcarts have the right of way and very little braking; ask before photographing anyone at work, and accept a refusal gracefully.
• The lanes link easily on foot to Crawford Market, Mangaldas Market and the Bhuleshwar temple streets, so they make a natural first stop on a South Mumbai market walk.
• Trading thins out on Sundays and public holidays, and the lanes are congested and slippery through the monsoon.
• For food, you are in one of the better corners of Mumbai for pure vegetarian eating.
• The surrounding Mandvi, Kalbadevi and Bhuleshwar trader belt has long supported Gujarati and Marwari eating houses built for merchant families who eat no meat, alongside farsan counters selling khaman, fafda, ganthia and jalebi, and small South Indian counters turning out idli, medu vada and filter coffee.
• Mumbai as a whole is a major seafood and non-vegetarian city, so do not assume anything from the neighbourhood: look for a pure-veg or shuddh shakahari board and confirm at the counter before you order, especially at general street stalls.
• Several shops here also prepare Jain food during Paryushan, but ask rather than take it for granted.