Shree Siddhivinayak Ganapati Temple

Gold-domed and floodlit above the traffic of S.K. Bole Marg, Shree Siddhivinayak Ganapati Temple is the shrine Mumbai turns to first.

• It stands in Prabhadevi, in the old mill belt between Dadar and Worli, and on almost any day the queue outside is a cross-section of the city: office workers with lanyards still round their necks, families carrying coconuts and marigold garlands, students before an exam, drivers on a break.
• For a temple that began as a one-room village structure, its reach is extraordinary — Marathi devotional songs recorded in its name are played in homes across Maharashtra, and "going to Siddhivinayak" is local shorthand for asking a blessing before anything that matters.
• The original shrine is generally dated to 1801 and credited to Laxman Vithu Patil, built with funds from Deubai Patil, a well-to-do local woman who is said to have wished that the temple grant children to those who had none.
• The murti at its heart is carved from a single block of black stone, roughly two and a half feet tall, and its defining feature is the trunk curving to the right — an uncommon form held to be exacting in ritual and, in popular belief, especially quick to answer.
• Riddhi and Siddhi flank the deity, and a Hanuman shrine shares the compound.
• The modest original building was replaced through the 1990s by the present multi-storey complex, with its tiered gold-finished dome, carved wooden doors and a mirrored inner ceiling that throws lamplight back over the sanctum.
• Tuesday is the temple's day, and the line can then run for hours and spill down the surrounding roads; on Angarki Sankashti Chaturthi, when the fast falls on a Tuesday, the crowd is larger still.
• Weekday mornings soon after opening, or the last hour of the evening, are far calmer.
• Queues are organised and monitored, there is security screening at the entrance, footwear is left outside, and photography inside the sanctum is not permitted — travel light and dress modestly.
• Darshan itself is brief; allow an hour or so in total, longer on Tuesdays.
• Shivaji Park, Dadar's flower and cloth markets and the Mahim seafront are all short rides away if you want to make a morning of it.
• Food around the temple is easy for vegetarians, with one caveat: Mumbai is a seafood city, and many restaurants across the wider Dadar–Prabhadevi area serve fish, meat and egg alongside everything else, so look for a clearly marked pure-veg board and confirm at the counter before ordering.
• The trust's prasad counter sells boxed laddoos and modaks, the traditional offering to Ganapati.
• A short ride into Dadar West brings you to one of the city's better vegetarian belts: long-running Maharashtrian snack houses doing thalipeeth, sabudana vada, misal and piyush, Udupi rooms for idli, medu vada and filter coffee, and Gujarati and Rajasthani thali places for an unhurried full meal.
• Jain travellers will usually find a no-onion-no-garlic option, but ask rather than assume.