Chivda Galli, Lalbaug Farsan Market

Chivda Galli is one of Mumbai's most single-minded lanes. A short, shoulder-to-shoulder stretch off Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Road near Lalbaug market, it sits in the heart of Girangaon, the old cotton-mill district whose chawls and shift sirens shaped working-class Bombay for the better part of a century.

• Most of the mills have gone, replaced by glass towers a few streets west, but this lane still runs to a factory rhythm.
• You smell it before you see it: hot groundnut oil, curry leaves, asafoetida, roasting gram flour and the sugar-and-cardamom warmth of ladoo being rolled in the back rooms.
• The trade here is farsan, the vast Maharashtrian and Gujarati family of savoury fried and roasted snacks, sold wholesale and retail by the kilo rather than the packet.
• Sacks and steel drums hold a dozen kinds of chivda alone: fine poha chivda studded with peanuts and coconut slivers, coarse jada poha, potato chivda cut into matchsticks, roasted corn versions and lighter variants for people avoiding the fryer.
• Beside them sit spirals of chakli, several gauges of sev, crumbly besan and rava ladoo, shankarpali, karanji and, in the cool months, slabs of peanut and sesame chikki.
• Shopkeepers hand out tasting pinches without ceremony, and buying a hundred grams of three different things is entirely normal.
• The lane's high tide is the fortnight before Diwali, when Mumbai households order faral, the festive snack assortment, in bulk and the queues spill onto the main road from early morning until late at night.
• It is a spectacular and exhausting time to come.
• For an unhurried look, choose a weekday morning outside the festival season.
• Prices are keen, packaging is plain and almost everything is quoted by weight, so read the rate board before you order.
• Lalbaug is also a Ganeshotsav epicentre, and the surrounding streets become close to impassable during the September festival days.
• On food, the lane is reassuring but not automatic.
• The farsan trade here is traditionally vegetarian, yet Lalbaug's wider market district includes non-vegetarian sections, so read the board and ask at the counter rather than assuming a street-wide rule.
• It is worth checking whether a shop fries in plant oil and whether any bakery-style item contains egg; good shopkeepers answer without irritation.
• For a sit-down meal, the Maharashtrian snack houses and Udupi-style canteens around Lalbaug, Parel and Dadar serve misal, poha, sabudana khichdi, idli, dosa and rice thalis, and several display a pure-vegetarian board, which is still worth confirming before ordering at any multi-cuisine place.
• Carry small notes and a cloth bag.