Khotachiwadi: Walking Girgaon's Hidden 200-Year-Old Heritage Village

Step off the roar of Jagannath Shankar Seth Road, duck into a lane barely wide enough for two people to pass, and Mumbai simply stops. The horns fade, the light softens, and you are standing among low wooden bungalows painted buttercup yellow and pistachio green, their carved balconies sagging gently with age, a small red-painted cross keeping watch over the corner. This is Khotachiwadi: a two-hundred-year-old East Indian Christian hamlet folded into the heart of Girgaon, and one of the last places in the island city where you can still feel what old Bombay looked and felt like at street level. It is not a museum and there is no ticket booth. It is a living neighbourhood, which is exactly why it rewards a slow, respectful wander.

What Khotachiwadi actually is

The wadi takes its name from Dadoba Waman Khot, a Pathare Prabhu landowner who, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, leased and sold plots of what was then a quiet grove to families of the East Indian community — the Marathi-speaking Catholics of the Konkan coast, sometimes called Salsette Christians, whose roots go back to Portuguese-era conversions. The Bombay Municipal Corporation officially recorded the name Khotachiwadi around 1880. At its peak the quarter held roughly 65 timber bungalows in a loose Portuguese-Goan idiom: sloping tiled roofs, open verandahs, latticed external staircases built from teak shipped in from Burma, stained-glass fanlights and internal courtyards.

Today only about 28 of those original houses survive. The rest have been lost to redevelopment, and the surviving lanes are now a patchwork of heritage cottages, later chawls and the odd apartment block, with Gujarati, Marwari and Sindhi families having settled alongside the older Marathi and Christian residents from the 1940s onward. In 1995 the precinct was granted heritage protection, which is part of why anything at all remains. That fragility is the backdrop to everything you will see here — this is a place actively fighting to exist.

Walking the lanes

There is no set route and the whole quarter takes barely fifteen minutes to cross, so the trick is to slow right down. Wander the two main lanes and the little capillaries running off them, and let your eye do the work: the hand-painted house numbers, the bougainvillea spilling over a first-floor rail, a Madonna in a niche, the murals and street art that residents and visiting artists have added over the years.

Do pause at the small village cross and chapel, painted a warm red, with a crucified Christ and a much-loved mural of Mary seated on a lotus cradling the infant Jesus — a quietly beautiful blend of Catholic and Indian imagery. Local accounts hold that the shrine was raised in the late nineteenth century in thanksgiving for the wadi being spared the worst of the 1890s plague that ravaged Bombay. It is still the community’s focal point, and never more so than at Christmas.

Practical tip: keep your voice down and stay in the lanes. Almost every door is someone’s home. Peering through windows or wandering into courtyards is not on, however photogenic the interior looks.

47-A

Area: at the far end of the main lane. The most rewarding single stop is 47-A, a design gallery and cultural space on the ground floor of a mid-nineteenth-century bungalow that has been in the same family since 1857. Restored and opened as a public gallery in 2022 by Srila Chatterjee along with Mortimer Chatterjee and Tara Lal, it is the unmistakable blue-and-yellow building at the end of the lane. Inside you will find rotating shows of Indian textiles, crafts and contemporary design, all for sale, and the team also runs heritage walks, seasonal events and a Christmas market. Why it’s worth it: it is the one place you can legitimately step indoors and see a restored Khotachiwadi bungalow from the inside, while supporting the conservation effort. Practical tip: opening days vary around exhibitions and events, so message them before making a special trip.

The Ferreira House

Area: bungalow 47-G, off the main lane. The wadi’s best-known resident is the veteran fashion designer James Ferreira, who lives and works in his roughly 200-year-old family home and has spent decades campaigning to save the precinct, a cause long carried by the Khotachiwadi Welfare and Heritage Trust. The ground floor operates as an intimate bed-and-breakfast (listed on Airbnb as “The Ferreiras Heritage Bungalow”), all antique curios, beaded lampshades and jazz, with the designer’s studio upstairs. Why it’s worth it: an overnight here is the deepest way to experience the village, waking up inside the heritage rather than photographing it from the lane. Practical tip: it is a private home, not a walk-in attraction — enquire and book ahead by email or via Airbnb rather than knocking. Rates are on request.

St Teresa’s Church

Area: Raja Ram Mohan Roy Road, off Jagannath Shankar Seth Road. The grand Church of St Teresa of Avila, on the edge of Girgaon, is both a landmark for finding the wadi and worth a look in its own right — a long-established local parish. Practical tip: use it as your navigation anchor. From Charni Road station, make for St Teresa’s, then the lanes of Khotachiwadi open just behind it.

Where to eat nearby

Khotachiwadi itself has no cafes to speak of — that is part of its quiet — but Girgaon is old-Bombay eating country and everything is a short walk.

Panshikar

Area: Jagannath Shankar Seth Road, Girgaon. A neighbourhood institution going since the 1920s, Panshikar is the place for classic Maharashtrian snacks: misal pav, batata vada, kanda poha and thalipeeth, finished with a glass of piyush, the thick, sweet shrikhand-and-yoghurt drink that is a Girgaon speciality. Why it’s worth it: it is genuine, cheap and exactly the sort of place the wadi’s older residents have eaten at for generations. Practical tip: you can eat very well for a couple of hundred rupees for two; go mid-morning for the freshest batch of snacks.

For rounding off the afternoon, Girgaon Chowpatty, ten minutes away towards the sea, is the obvious spot to finish with bhelpuri and a kulfi as the light goes.

Photographing it without intruding

Khotachiwadi has become a favourite of photographers and film crews, and the residents are, on the whole, gracious about it — but the goodwill is finite and worth protecting.

• Photograph the architecture, the doors, the cross, the street art freely.
• Ask before you photograph any resident, and never point a lens through a window or open door.
• Keep groups small and quiet; this is a residential lane, not a set.
• Don’t move plants, prop open gates or stage shoots without permission — commercial shoots are expected to seek it.

Treat the place as you would a stranger’s front garden and you will be welcome back.

Getting there and when to go

The easy way in is Charni Road station on the Western line, about a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk: come out on the east side near Saifee Hospital, head for St Teresa’s Church and the lanes are just behind it. The nearest Metro stop, Girgaon on the underground Line 3 (Aqua Line), is well under a kilometre off. Any auto or app cab will know Khotachiwadi or St Teresa’s Church, Girgaon.

For light and calm, come early morning or late afternoon on a weekday. The most atmospheric time of all is the run from Christmas to New Year, when the bungalows string up fairy lights, doorways fill with cribs and stars, and you may catch Marathi carols drifting down the lane — the one occasion the whole village comes out to celebrate.

Guided walks

If you want the stories behind the doors, go with a guide. Khaki Tours (set up in 2015; the name stands for Keeping Heritage Alive & Kicking in India) runs Girgaon and heritage walks, including a well-known late-night “Grisly Girgaon” ghost walk that ends inside Khotachiwadi. Cultural bodies such as the Alliance Française de Bombay have periodically run dedicated “Revisiting Khotachiwadi” walks too. Practical tip: a good guide turns a pretty ten-minute stroll into an hour of genuine history — the plague shrine, the East Indian community, the fight against redevelopment.

FAQ

Is there an entry fee for Khotachiwadi? No. It is a public residential neighbourhood you simply walk into. Only paid extras — a guided walk, a purchase at 47-A, or a B&B stay — cost anything.

How long do I need? The lanes themselves take fifteen to thirty minutes to wander. Add an hour or two if you stop at 47-A, do a guided walk, or eat in Girgaon afterwards.

What is the nearest station? Charni Road on the Western line, about a ten-minute walk. Girgaon Metro on Line 3 is under a kilometre away.

When is the best time to visit? Weekday mornings or late afternoons for quiet and good light; the Christmas-to-New-Year fortnight for the decorations and carols.

Can I go inside the bungalows? They are private homes, so no — with one exception: the 47-A gallery, which is a public space when it is open for exhibitions and events. A stay at the Ferreira House B&B is the other way in.

Is it safe and family-friendly? Yes. It is a calm, well-kept residential pocket of South Mumbai. Just keep noise down and respect that people live there.

The bottom line

Khotachiwadi is a small place asking for a small, careful kind of attention. Come in the soft part of the day, walk slowly, photograph the peeling paint and the lotus Madonna rather than the residents, buy something at 47-A or a plate of misal at Panshikar to put a little back, and leave the lanes as quiet as you found them. What you get in return is rare in a city forever knocking itself down and rebuilding: a genuine fragment of nineteenth-century Bombay, still lived in, still loved, and — for now — still standing.