Page 464 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - India

462  SOUTHWESTERN INDIA

Marine Drive, sweeping in an arc along the sea, connecting the northern and southern ends of Mumbai
t Marine Drive meeting after work and families finest musicians and dancers
gathering around the vendors perform regularly in its other
Netaji Subhash Chandra Rd.
selling coconut water and auditoriums (see pp466–7).
Known as the “Queen’s bhelpuri (see p444).
Necklace” after the glittering Chowpatty Beach is the city’s
string of streetlights lining the most popular promenade and y Malabar Hill
road, Marine Drive (renamed the southern most of Mumbai’s Bounded by Napean Sea Rd,
Netaji Subhash Chandra Road) beaches. Earlier cluttered with Ridge Rd & Walkeshwar Rd.
sweeps along a sea-facing food stalls and hawkers, the
promenade that runs from area has now been substantially This posh residential area, once
Nariman Point to Malabar cleaned up in a drive by the dotted with bungalows set in
Hill. Built on land reclaimed civic authorities. An inexpensive large, forested compounds, is
from the sea in the 1920s, it evening desti nation for the city’s today crowded with high-rise
is also the main arterial link residents, it remains lively till apartment blocks, home to
between the suburbs and the late at night. It is also the venue Mumbai’s rich and famous.
city’s prime commercial and for Mumbai’s largest festival, The Parsi Towers of Silence are
adminis trative centres, Nariman Ganesha Chaturthi (see p471), also located in this area. Parsis
Point and the Fort area (see when huge crowds gather at (see p451), who believe that the
p457). Situated at its eastern Chowpatty Beach to immerse elements of earth, water, air and
periphery is the Oval Maidan, idols of Ganesha, the elephant- fire are sacred and should not be
nursery of such legendary headed god, in the Arabian Sea. defiled, place their dead in these
Indian cricketing heroes as The National Centre for the tall, cylindrical stone towers to
Sachin Tendulkar (b.1973) and Performing Arts (NCPA), at the be picked clean by vultures. This,
Sunil Gavaskar (b.1949). southern tip of Marine Drive, they believe, is one of the most
The buildings of Marine Drive is the city’s most active venue environmentally friendly ways
are characterized by a strong for music, dance and theatre of disposing of the dead. A fall
Art Deco flavour, pop ular in performances. Its Tata Theatre in Mumbai’s vulture population,
Mumbai during the 1930s and Experimental Theatre stage however, remains a cause of
and 1940s. With the advent works by international and worry. A high wall and a thick
of electric elevators, and with Indian playwrights with the belt of trees surround the Towers,
concrete replacing the earlier best of local talent, while India’s which are closed to visitors.
stone and brick, the apartment
blocks on the seafront were
built to a uniform height of
five floors, making this the
most fashionable residential
area of the time. Real estate
prices on this stretch are very
high. The most notable building
here is The Oberoi.
The best way to enjoy Marine
Drive during the day is from
the upper floor of a red double-
decker bus, which provides
panoramic views of the sea and
the city’s skyline. In the evening,
the area swarms with people
taking their daily walks, couples The Hanging Gardens, rising in tiers on Malabar Hill
For hotels and restaurants in this region see p700 and pp714–15

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