Girgaum Gudi Padwa Shobha Yatra

On the first morning of Chaitra, long before the rest of Mumbai wakes, the lanes of Girgaon begin to fill with drums. The Girgaum Gudi Padwa Shobha Yatra is the city's best-known Marathi New Year procession — a dawn parade that threads through the old wadis, the tight clusters of low-rise chawls and shared courtyards that have carried Mumbai's Marathi-speaking life for more than a century.

• It costs nothing, it welcomes everyone, and it is finished by mid-morning, which makes it one of the easiest big-ticket cultural experiences in the city to simply walk into.
• Gudi Padwa marks the new year in the Maharashtrian calendar, and the gudi itself is the reason for all the colour.
• It is a bamboo pole raised at a window or balcony, dressed in a bright silk cloth, hung with a garland of neem and mango leaves and a necklace of sugar crystals, and capped with an inverted brass or silver pot.
• In the days before the yatra, households along the route scrub their doorways and chalk out rangoli; on the morning itself, almost every balcony in the wadis carries a gudi.
• The procession below is a rolling display of Maharashtrian performance culture — dhol-tasha pathaks of a hundred drummers apiece, lezim troupes keeping time with jangling metal discs, flag squads, mardani khel displays with lathi and sword, decorated floats, and long files of women in nine-yard nauvari saris, many of them riding two-wheelers, with men in saffron and magenta phetas walking alongside.
• The yatra is a relatively young tradition in a very old neighbourhood: it was started in 2003 by a Girgaon-based youth cultural committee, and has since become the best-known of the many new-year processions held across Maharashtra.
• Come early — the assembly and the first drum sets begin around dawn, and the best of it is over by about 10 am, after which the sun on Jagannath Shankarshet Road turns serious.
• Roads along the route close to traffic, so plan to walk in from Charni Road or Grant Road station.
• Photographers do better in the side lanes and wadi gateways than on the main road, where the crush is thickest.
• This is a devotional as well as a civic occasion, so dress modestly, ask before photographing people at close range, and keep well clear of the drum formations and the martial-arts displays.
• Girgaon is one of the better corners of Mumbai for a vegetarian breakfast, and the neighbourhood's old snack houses open early on Padwa.
• Around Thakurdwar, Girgaon Naka and Charni Road you will find Maharashtrian upahar-style counters serving sabudana khichdi, misal, batata vada, kothimbir wadi, thalipeeth and hot sheera, along with Udupi-style rooms turning out idli, medu vada, uttapam and filter coffee.
• Several of these are run as pure-vegetarian kitchens, but Mumbai is a mixed-menu city, so read the board and confirm at the counter before you order.
• Festival-day sweet shops sell shrikhand, puran poli and basundi to carry home, and the traditional Padwa mouthful — a pinch of neem leaf with jaggery — is handed out freely along the route.