Ganeshotsav Mandals of Lalbaug and Parel

For ten days at the close of the monsoon, the old mill neighbourhoods of Lalbaug and Parel in central Mumbai stop behaving like a working district of chawls, wholesale lanes and shuttered textile-mill gates, and turn into one continuous street festival.

• This is the heartland of the city's sarvajanik — public — Ganeshotsav.
• Dozens of neighbourhood mandals, residents' committees that have run their own celebration for generations, raise vast temporary pandals over the roads, install Ganapati idols that can rise several storeys, and keep the lanes lit, drummed and moving from before dawn until long past midnight.
• Nothing here is ticketed, staged or curated for visitors; it is a working neighbourhood throwing its own party, and anyone who arrives respectfully is welcome inside it.
• The festival's public form is generally credited to the nationalist leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who in the 1890s encouraged Maharashtrians to move Ganesh Chaturthi out of the home and into the street as a way of gathering people together under colonial rule.
• Lalbaug's best-known mandal was established in 1934 by traders of the local market, who believed a long-held wish for a permanent marketplace had been granted; its idol is still called the Navsacha Ganpati, the Ganapati of the vow, and its darshan queue is the longest in Mumbai.
• A few minutes' walk away, the mandal in Ganesh Galli built its reputation on architecture rather than sheer scale, recreating a temple, palace or monument in plywood, plaster and paint as a fresh pandal each year.
• Smaller mandals around Chinchpokli, Tejukaya and Kalachowki fill in the rest of the map, each with its own decorative theme, its own dhol-tasha troupe and its own loyal lane.
• Expect to walk, and expect to wait.
• The largest mandals run two separate lines — charan darshan, which brings you to the idol's feet and can take many hours, and mukh darshan, a faster viewing from a barricaded distance.
• Weekday mornings are far calmer than weekend nights, while the final days before Anant Chaturdashi, when the idols leave in immersion processions heading towards Girgaum Chowpatty, are the most crowded of all.
• Travel light, leave large bags behind, wear footwear you can slip off easily, keep children within reach and follow the volunteers in matching caps who marshal the queues.
• Roads across the district close to traffic in long stretches, so plan on covering the last leg on foot, and carry a light raincoat — the monsoon rarely bows out politely.
• Food is inseparable from the ten days, and almost all of it here is vegetarian by custom.
• Modak — steamed ukadiche parcels of rice flour with a jaggery-and-coconut filling, or the fried version — is the festival sweet, handed out as prasad at the mandals and sold from temporary counters along the route; ask what the filling is before buying at a stall you do not know.
• Lalbaug's long-established farsan lane, known locally as Chivda Galli, sells chivda, chakli, laddoo and dry namkeen by weight from a row of counters just off Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Road, and several are veteran pure-veg shops, though it is always worth reading the board or asking first.
• For a sit-down meal, the Udupi-style canteens and Maharashtrian snack houses around Parel, Currey Road and Chinchpokli stations serve misal, poha, batata vada, idli, dosa and thali plates; many are pure-veg, but central Mumbai has plenty of non-vegetarian kitchens on the same stretches, so confirm before ordering rather than assuming.