Mumbai's great railway terminus is a cathedral built for engines. It was designed by the English architect Frederick William Stevens and completed in the late 1880s as Victoria Terminus, named for the queen who was also Empress of India, and its mixture of Victorian Gothic and Indian motifs is one of the most flamboyant of the age. Domes, spires, pointed arches, carved peacocks and lions, stained glass and stone gargoyles give the whole building a theatrical quality. It was renamed in honour of the Maratha king Shivaji in the 1990s, and is now on the World Heritage list. Locals still call it VT.
The station is not a museum but a working organism. Hundreds of thousands of commuters pass through it daily, and the suburban trains, jam-packed and open-doored, are part of Mumbai's mythology. Outside, the pavements teem with hawkers, taxi drivers, tea sellers and pigeons, and the black-and-yellow cabs and red double-decker buses go by in a constant stream.
Riding in south Mumbai needs a particular state of mind. Traffic drives on the left, horns are constant, and lane discipline is a loose idea. Buses, taxis, autorickshaws and handcarts all move in different ways, so watch every gap and anticipate abrupt turns. At dawn on a Sunday the streets are almost calm, and a run along Marine Drive, the curved seafront promenade known as the Queen's Necklace, is one of the great city rides. The monsoon from June to September brings heavy rain, flooded streets and slippery tramlines and manhole covers, and the heat before it is thick and heavy.
The map shows Uran across the harbour as the nearest listed town, which is a reminder that Mumbai sits on an island city at the end of a peninsula, with the sea on three sides. Fuel is easy to find in the city, though petrol stations in the very south are fewer, and food is everywhere, from vada pav and cutting chai at street stalls to old Irani cafes. Park carefully, since the police can be strict, and take care with security of the bike in crowded streets.