350 pages · 600+ photographs · 100+ walks · Mumbai - like you've never seen it
Cities are rarely seen. They are usually rushed through.
I started walking Mumbai early in the morning because I wanted to find the city before it woke up. What I found instead was a city I never knew existed. Forests inside the city limits. Fishing villages ten minutes from glass towers. A coastline that changes its face every morning. Faith hiding in the most unexpected corners. Four years. More than a hundred walks. And Mumbai just kept showing me more. Come see what I found.
"For Mumbai - where beauty and struggle share the same pavement, and hope works tirelessly in between."
Nature has been quietly taking this back. Mumbai let it.
Ten minutes from a five-star hotel. A different world entirely.
An island fort sitting quietly in Mumbai's harbour. Most people have never noticed it.
The city is quietest just before it remembers what it is.
Mumbai prays in the middle of everything, without apology.
Mumbai's faith has never been shy about showing itself.
This is what Mumbai looks like before Mumbai begins.
Mumbai in the rain looks like a city seeing itself clearly for the first time.
Some doors in Mumbai have been opening since before the city knew what it would become.
Light has been falling through these arches for over a hundred years. It still knows exactly where to land.
One city. Two worlds. Same street.
The walk that went wrong turned out to be the best one.
The horse has been watching this city change for decades. It has seen everything.
I walked past this for years. I never once looked up.
600 photographs.
Every one of them has a story..
They are all waiting for you...
11 x 11 inches. 350 pages.
Printed on premium art paper. Built to last a lifetime.
All images featured on this website and in the book were captured using personal iPhone.
This is not a book you read and put away.
It is a book you leave on a table and find people standing over, turning pages slowly, saying – “I had no idea this place existed.”
Every photograph was taken on foot, before the city woke up, in the kind of light that disappears the moment you hurry.
Every story was written close to the moment – while the walk was still in the legs and the city was still in the eyes.
The result is 350 pages of Mumbai that most people – even lifelong Mumbaikars – have never seen.
"Mumbai has long been studied, documented, and interpreted through historical, architectural, and economic lenses. What Sanjay Mehta brings is something different - the everyday poetry of Mumbai."
Juzer Tambawalla, Franklin Templeton | Ambassador of Mumbai - Khaki Tours
Each pre-order copy comes with a signed letter from Sanjay and a handwritten bookplate.
The Thematic Explorer
Mumbai does not do quiet commerce. It does theatre. Every lane in every market is a performance – vendors calling out, colours competing, smells layering over each other, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, the city’s business getting done with remarkable efficiency.
Walking through this city at its most alive, I stopped trying to make sense of the chaos. Instead I just watched. And slowly, what looked like disorder revealed itself to be a perfectly choreographed system that has been running, without interruption, for over a hundred years.
Across walks through Crawford Market, Chor Bazaar, Dadar, Dharavi and the living streets of old Mumbai
Mumbai’s faith has never belonged to one religion, one community, or one corner of the city. On these walks I found temples, mosques, dargahs, churches, synagogues, and a golden Buddhist pagoda that looks like it was lifted straight from Myanmar and placed quietly in the middle of a Mumbai neighbourhood. Each one certain of itself. Each one completely at home.
Across walks from Banganga to Gorai, Sewri to Mahim, and unexpected corners in between
Mumbai is a city built on water, surrounded by water, defined by water. And yet most of its residents have stopped truly seeing the sea. On these walks, I kept returning to the coast – at different times, different tides, different weathers. It never looked the same twice. It never disappointed once.
Across walks from Versova to Colaba, Worli to Madh Island
Ask most Mumbaikars where the city’s green spaces are and they will mention Sanjay Gandhi National Park or perhaps Hanging Gardens. But Mumbai has been quietly holding onto dozens of smaller, wilder, more personal green spaces – botanical gardens that feel like a different country, hilltop parks where the city completely disappears, stretches of grassland and forest that the city somehow built itself around and forgot to remove.
You only find these places on foot. And only if you show up early enough, before the city remembers you are there.
Across walks through Aarey, Parsik Hill, Sagar Upvan, Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan and hidden green pockets across the city
Some walks took me somewhere I had not planned to go. Not a different neighbourhood – a different time. A street I had not visited in thirty years looked exactly as I had left it. A building I had passed as a child without understanding what it was suddenly made complete sense. A view I had taken for granted for decades stopped me completely.
Mumbai holds memory in its streets the way old buildings hold moisture – quietly, without announcement, until you walk close enough to feel it.
Across walks through Girgaum, Matunga, Mahakali Caves, childhood streets and personal landmarks across a lifetime in this city
"Whichever Mumbai is yours - it is in here."
Reserve your copy before it goes to print.
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Pre-order Price
₹5,999 India Shipping /
USD 99 International Shipping
*Incl. shipping
Pre-order closes 30th November 2026. Retail Price after that Rs. 7,500+ / USD 120+ inc Shipping
Books ship by December 2026*
*Subject to confirmation. Pre-order buyers will be notified of any change in timeline.
The book, delivered to your door
Signed Letter from Sanjay
A Handwritten Bookplate
Your name acknowledged in a special First Walkers keepsake
The Founding Walk Companion - ₹15,000
Limited to 25 people. Includes the book, a private guided walk with Sanjay through one Mumbai neighbourhood of your choice, and your name acknowledged in the book’s closing pages.
For Mumbaikars The World Over
"You left Mumbai.
Mumbai hasn't left you."
This book was written by someone who walks Mumbai on weekends, early in the morning – not because he has to, but because the city keeps surprising him.
If you live somewhere else now, you already know that feeling. The way Mumbai stays with you. The neighbourhoods that live in your memory more vividly than the street you actually live on now. The sounds, the smells, the particular quality of morning light on an old building.
“Sanjay Drishti will not make you homesick. It will make you feel like you never really left.”
SHIPPING WORLDWIDE
Shipping to any international address:
Pre-order Pricing USD $99 inclusive of shipping.
Delivered to your door. Signed by Sanjay. A piece of home.
This Book Is The Perfect Gift
"Know someone whose
heart belongs to Mumbai?"
There are people in your life for whom Mumbai is not just a city. It is where they grew up. Where they fell in love. Where they built something. Where they left something behind.
Sanjay Drishti is the gift that says – “I know what this city means to you. And I found someone who has seen it the way you always wished you had.”
A book this beautiful, this personal, and this specific to Mumbai does not need an occasion. But if you need one – a birthday, a farewell, a housewarming, a thank you – this is it.