Dawn at the Docks in Colaba

Mumbai's budget-tourist district is often packed with vacationing Arabs in the rainy season and Western backpackers in the winter. Cheap boardinghouses, handicraft stalls, and eating places stand cheek-by-jowl on the southern tip of Mumbai's peninsula.

One of Colaba's most interesting sights is its fishing dock, built back in 1875. Extraordinarily smelly, mucky, and noisy, Sassoon Dock, on Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg, near the Colaba Bus Station, must be seen at dawn, when most of Mumbai's seafood catch is unloaded. Piles of pink prawns are sorted, and grisly looking fish are topped and tailed. The odor is severe, but you won't see this kind of chaos and color anywhere else. Out toward the ocean, the famously stinky Bombay duck, actually a fish unique to this coastline, dries on rack after rack in the sun.

Walk north for about 10 minutes toward Navy Nagar (the naval cantonment area) on Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg. Just beyond Colaba Post Office is the old Afghan Memorial Church of St. John the Baptist. Rather out of place in the heart of Colaba, this somewhat imposing structure honors British soldiers lost in the Afghan wars of the late 19th century. The plaques inside say things like, In the memory of Captain Conville Warneford of the Bombay Political Dept and the Gurkha Rifles who was born 13th October 1871 and was treacherously murdered by an Arab at Amrija in the Aden hinterland... If the church doors are closed look for the caretaker, who lives at the side of the church, in the church enclosure, and ask him to show you the church; give him a small something for his trouble.

From the church, retrace your steps on Shahid Bhagat Singh as far as the fork outside Colaba Post Office; on foot, take Wodehouse Road up to Panday Road, then turn left there. You'll see Capt. Prakash Petha Marg—take another left there, walk for five minutes (past the Taj President hotel), and just beyond the Colaba Woods (park) on your right on Cuffe Parade is a dhobi ghat, behind a facade of huts. (If you get lost, ask a local for help.) Another fascinating open-air sight, the ghat consists of a square half-kilometer of cement stalls where dhobis, or washermen, pound their garments to what seems like pulp to get them threadbare-clean. Rows of racks flutter with drying laundry, and in little huts nearby the incorrigibly dirty stuff is boiled with caustic soda.