Cross Maidan Garden

This guide to Cross Maidan Garden in Mumbai reaches back five hundred years, when plague tore through the small Portuguese trading port and terrified survivors vowed to raise a stone cross here as a public thank-you if they lived. It follows that cross through the centuries, from its first home near a washing pond at Dhobitalao to its move onto this maidan, and introduces a Parsi traveler, Bhika Behram, who added a freshwater well nearby in 1725. You'll hear about the Feast of the Holy Cross every May, when crowds of every faith gather around the stone. Cricketers still warm up just meters from where pilgrims pray.