3 Best Sights in Mumbai, India

This narrow thoroughfare, in the center of classic Muslim Mumbai, is lined with dozens of stores crammed with antiques and general bric-a-brac: clocks, old phonographs, brassware, glassware, and statues; some of it quite cheap. Over the years the value and breadth of much of this stock has dwindled, but there's still a chance that you'll find an unusual, memorable piece. Haggle. In the same lane a number of shops are engaged in the profitable business of constructing new furniture that looks old; many will openly tell you as much. Some shops do stock genuine antique furniture from old Parsi homes. Around the corner, stolen cell phones and car stereos are being hawked. The Thieves' Bazaar got its name because it's always been the kind of place that sold goods that fell off the back of the truck—or back of the camel—and even today you can't be too sure of the provenance of your purchases. Getting to the Chor Bazaar will take you on a tour of an interesting and very staunchly Muslim neighborhood, where life has a completely different flavor from elsewhere in the city.

Renamed Mahatma Jyotiba Phule market decades ago, but still known by its original name, this building was designed in the 1860s by John Lockwood Kipling (father of Rudyard, who was born in this very neighborhood). The market's stone flooring supposedly came from Caithness, Scotland. Check out the stone relief depicting workers on the outside of the building. Come here early in the morning for a colorful walk through Mumbai's fresh-produce emporium, and if it's late spring or early summer, treat yourself to a delicious Alphonso mango—the experience has had many people rhapsodize that they've never truly had a mango until they ate one of these. Everything from cookies and party streamers to cane baskets is sold in other sections of the market—the meat section can be a bit hair-raising. In the middle lane (Sheikh Memon Street) of Crawford Market, is the chaotic Mangaldas Market, a covered, wholesale cloth market with a tremendous variety of fabrics at hundreds of indoor stalls. Across the street from the market's main entrance on the west, spread across a trio of lanes, is a smaller but popular bazaar area called Lohar Chawl, where the selection ranges from plastic flowers to refrigerators.

If you're headed to the market during the monsoon, wear rain boots or shoes you don't mind getting dirty. The floors can become quite mucky.

Mumbai's crowded, century-old jewelry markets have shops filled with fabulous gold and silver in every conceivable design. The two bazaars are so intermingled at this point that it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other starts. If you notice people walking past with plastic bags full of cash, try not to stare—this is also a major hub for (certainly illegal, widely known, wholly tolerated) money laundering, completely out in the open, with no security measures in place. You'll find the bazaars a little beyond Fort in the neighborhood of Kalbadevi—a 10-minute walk northwest of Crawford Market.

One of the lanes leading off Zaveri Bazaar is called Khao Galli (literally "Eat Lane") and its endless food stalls feed most of the bazaar workers daily; it's here that you'll find some of Mumbai's best—and most unusual—non--veg street food.