An aerial view of Mumbai city

These are some of the photographs I took as we flew over Mumbai last month. The first set I took from Spicejet, a low cost airline. The windows were awfully dirty and some of the photos are smudged.

The first photograph was taken after we had taken off from Mumbai and you can see that the plane was flying over some sort of railway yard…that is visible in the bottom half of the picture. A goods train, a local subway train as well as a train station can be seen in the lower left hand corner.

The next photograph is slightly clearer and looks like we were flying over some housing colony. The western express highway is visible on the right

This is a better view of the western express highway

I don’t know which slums these are but they appeared as we neared the sea

The next set of photographs were taken when we were landing in Mumbai (a few days later) from Kingfisher Airlines. The windows were cleaner and therefore I managed to get better photographs.

The first one is a little dull…but it is the Thane Belapur industrial belt and that is how it looked…dull brown, almost as if we were looking at the craters on the moon!

This one was taken as we approached Vashi. You can see Vashi bridge on the right of the picture and I have drawn a red arrow to point out Vashi station.

This photograph was taken just a minute after the previous one.

In another minute or so we were over the Eastern Express Highway. The road seen in the photograph is actually a flyover. If you look closely you can see the road below the bridge and the vehicles plying on it.

And then into Mumbai, most probably the eastern suburbs.

On the right hand side of the photo I think is either Vikhroli or Ghatkopar railway station.

The flight path of domestic airlines doesn’t take you over the fancy south mumbai skyline, which is what characterizes Mumbai and is the Mumbai that tourists usually see. I am publishing some south Mumbai pictures too…these photographs were taken at the end of last year.

This first photo shows the skyline of Malabar Hill, an elite area of Mumbai. In the foreground is Marine Drive, a place where people come and spend their evenings watching the sea.

In fact Marine Drive is the most famous and probably the most good looking road of Mumbai. It has been called “Queens Necklace” because of the way it curves…and also because at night when its lighted up it glows like a diamond necklace from the sky. There’s a picture which shows this very well…you can see it here (not my photo).

Recently Marine Drive had a make-over. The following photo was taken while the repair work on the sidewalks and seafront was on. You can see it underway on the right of the photograph.

The photograph below was taken a few months later when the repair work was over. Today Marine Drive has a spanking new look and is the pride of Mumbai city.

And this last photograph is of the famous Mumbai skyline – “Lands End.” The tall buildings are part of Nariman Point, which is Mumbai’s most expensive commercial area. The skyscraper facing you is the Air India building. Further down are the tall buildings of the naval establishment a Cuffe Parade, which is also another very posh area. Cuffe Parade has not just the Naval establishment, but also fancy hotels and fancy residential buildings. Malabar Hill is the only other residential address in Mumbai that is preferred.

Related Viewing: A photo-essay of a traffic signal in Mumbai
A slide show of a sunset in Mumbai
A make-over for Mumbai – photos
A few more Mumbai snapshots plus information on real estate costs in Mumbai
View all posts filed under the category of Photography
View all posts filed under the category of SlideShows
An email forward about the Mumbaikar in a nutshell

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