Khotachiwadi
Portuguese-style wooden villas with carved balconies and stained glass, a hidden urban enclave.
This guide to Khotachiwadi in Mumbai opens on a candlelit night in the early two-thousands, when residents carried flowers through this narrow lane to the rubble of a demolished wooden bungalow, staging a protest they called the Requiem for Khotachiwadi. It traces the lane back to Dadoba Waman Khot, the land officer who leased these plots to East Indian Christian families after Bombay's 1803 fire, and forward to James Ferreira, the fashion designer whose nearly two-hundred-year-old home still anchors it today. Look for the carved balconies, tiled roofs and stained glass that survive from that original settlement as you walk the lane.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.