Shree Mahalakshmi Temple

Mumbai's most visited goddess shrine sits at the point where the island city runs out of land. Shree Mahalakshmi Temple occupies a low rocky headland on the western shore, between Breach Candy and Mahalaxmi, with the Arabian Sea breaking a few steps below the sanctum wall.

• You reach it down a narrow, permanently crowded lane off Bhulabhai Desai Road, past stalls heaped with marigold and rose garlands, stacked coconuts, red chunris and steel trays of offerings.
• The approach is loud, close and fragrant — bells, hawkers' calls, the smell of camphor and crushed flowers — and then the lane opens out and the sea is suddenly there, grey-green and loud against the rocks.
• Local tradition dates the temple to the late eighteenth century, around the 1780s, and ties its founding to the building of the Hornby Vellard, the causeway raised to close the tidal breach between Worli and Malabar Hill that flooded the low ground at every high tide.
• The story told on the steps is that the embankment collapsed again and again until the contractor in charge dreamed of images of the goddess lying in the sea, had them recovered, and enshrined them on this rock — after which the work finally held.
• Historians treat the account cautiously, but it explains why Mumbai thinks of Mahalakshmi as the deity who made the modern city's ground possible, and why so much of the city's ordinary devotional life still flows through this one lane.
• Inside, three images stand side by side — Mahalakshmi at the centre, flanked by Mahakali and Mahasaraswati — dressed in silk, heavy gold ornament and nose rings, and almost always framed by a moving queue.
• Darshan is brisk rather than contemplative; the quieter pleasure is the terrace at the back, where devotees stand at the rail watching the water while the bells go on behind them.
• Entry is free and the temple opens early and closes late, footwear is left at the stands outside, and photography inside the shrine is not permitted.
• Weekday mornings are calmest; Tuesdays, Fridays and full-moon days are busy, and during Navratri in September or October the queue can stretch for hours out into the lane.
• For food, start with the lane itself: coconut water, boxes of dry prasad, pedha, roasted chana and, in winter, fresh sugarcane juice.
• Around Bhulabhai Desai Road and eastwards towards Tardeo and Nana Chowk you will find small Udupi-style counters doing idli, medu vada and filter coffee, and Gujarati and Marwari thali kitchens serving unlimited plates at lunch.
• Several of these advertise themselves as pure-vegetarian — but Mumbai is a major seafood city and non-vegetarian kitchens sit on the same streets, so read the board or ask at the counter before you order rather than assuming.
• If you want certainty, the fruit, coconut and packaged-prasad stalls at the temple lane are the simplest option; and wherever you eat, it is worth asking whether anything on the plate is egg-based.