Shivaji Park Maidan

Few open spaces carry as much of Mumbai's everyday identity as Shivaji Park, a broad rectangle of packed earth and patchy grass in Dadar West that the city's municipality laid out in the mid-1920s as a breathing space for the fast-growing mill neighbourhoods around it.

• It was first known as Mahim Park and took the name of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj soon after; an equestrian statue of the Maratha king stands near one corner.
• Roughly 28 acres in size, the maidan is framed on all four sides by quiet residential roads and by low apartment blocks in the rounded, balconied Art Deco style that defines this pocket of the city, so the ground reads less like a park and more like a village green dropped into a dense metropolis. Its fame rests on cricket.
• On any winter weekend the maidan carries a dozen or more overlapping matches on matting and turf pitches, fielders from one game standing inside the boundary of the next, coaching camps running nets along the edges and club tents pitched under the trees.
• The ground is closely associated with Sachin Tendulkar's early training under the coach Ramakant Achrekar, and with a long line of Mumbai cricketers who first learned the game on these pitches — which is why visiting cricket followers treat a slow lap of the maidan as a small pilgrimage.
• Off-season you will also find kho-kho, kabaddi, football and school athletics using the same dust.
• For residents, though, the maidan is mostly a walking ground.
• A perimeter track of roughly 1.3 kilometres fills from about half past five in the morning with walkers, joggers, laughter-yoga circles and stretching groups, and again after five in the evening when families, kite-flyers and vendors of roasted corn and coconut water take over.
• The sea is only a few hundred metres west at Dadar Chowpatty, so the light at dusk is unusually soft for central Mumbai.
• The ground is also a long-standing venue for large civic and cultural gatherings, and access can be restricted while one is being set up.
• For food, Dadar West is one of the better corners of Mumbai for pure vegetarian eating.
• Within a short walk of the maidan you will find Maharashtrian snack houses serving misal, thalipeeth, sabudana vada, kothimbir vadi and the thick saffron-buttermilk drink piyush, plus farsan shops along Ranade Road selling chiwda and chakli by weight.
• Many of these counters are vegetarian-only kitchens, but the neighbourhood as a whole is mixed, so read the board or ask at the till before ordering rather than assuming.
• Two kilometres east, the Udupi-style dining rooms around Matunga are a reliable fallback for South Indian vegetarian breakfasts.