Sheth Motishah Jain Derasar, Byculla

Behind a high compound wall on Love Lane — a short, shaded slip of a street in Byculla, a little east of the railway station — stands one of Mumbai's oldest and least-visited Jain temple complexes.

• The Sheth Motishah derasar was laid out in the late 1820s by Motichand Amichand, the Bombay merchant and philanthropist universally remembered as Sheth Motishah, a name that carries even greater weight some 700 kilometres to the north, where the Motisha Tuk forms one of the great walled enclosures of the temple city on Shatrunjaya hill at Palitana.
• The Byculla compound was conceived in something of the same spirit: an enclosed world of shrines, a miniature Palitana raised in a trading port for a mercantile community that could not always make the pilgrimage.
• The principal shrine honours Adinath, also called Adishwar, the first of the twenty-four Tirthankaras, which is why the complex is just as often known simply as the Adishwarji temple.
• Smaller shrines gather around the main one inside the wall, so that the shikharas rise in tiers and the whole ensemble reads, from the lane outside, as a single stepped silhouette against the sky.
• Successive generations of trustees have renewed the fabric with marble flooring, mirrorwork and painted ceilings, and the effect indoors is cool, polished and deliberately hushed — a striking contrast with the traffic a street or two away.
• Part of the compound's quiet fame is photographic: its towers appear in some of the earliest surviving images of Bombay, from a time when Byculla was still a suburb of gardens and low bungalows rather than the dense inner-city ward it became.
• This is an actively used devotional space rather than a monument, so visit on its terms.
• Darshan and puja follow a fixed daily rhythm — generally an early-morning session and an evening one with a long midday closure — and timings shift with the Jain calendar, so ask at the gate rather than assume.
• Leave shoes outside, carry nothing made of leather (belts and bags included), keep phones silent, and photograph only if the staff say you may; inside the sanctum the answer is usually no.
• Paryushan, in the late-monsoon weeks, brings the compound fully alive and also makes it far busier.
• Byculla rewards a longer walk afterwards: the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum and Jijamata Udyan are close by, and the ward's Victorian and Art Deco streetscapes repay an unhurried hour.
• Byculla sits between two very different food worlds, and that matters here.
• The lanes immediately north and east are known for meat-forward cooking, so never assume a neighbourhood kitchen is vegetarian — look for an explicit "pure veg" board and confirm at the counter before you order, including about eggs in bakery items.
• Working in your favour is the long Jain and Gujarati commercial presence across this belt: plain bhojanalayas and thali dining halls serving unlimited roti, sabzi, dal and rice; Udupi-style rooms turning out idli, dosa and filter coffee; and farsan and mithai counters selling khakhra, dhokla, ganthiya and barfi.
• Many such kitchens will also prepare Jain food without onion, garlic or root vegetables if you ask ahead, particularly during Paryushan.