Read the city south to north.

Where the city meets the harbour and where most first visits begin. The Gateway of India, the Taj, the fishing boats unloading at Sassoon Dock before dawn, and Causeway’s pavement stalls in one walkable kilometre. Sleepy by Mumbai standards after 11pm, and the only district where you will comfortably walk everywhere.

Land reclaimed in the 1970s to hold the head offices that would not fit in Fort, ending at the southern hook of Marine Drive. Cuffe Parade behind it is quiet, sea-facing and residential, and Metro Line 3 now begins here — which for the first time makes the southern tip a sensible place to sleep for a meeting further north.

The Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles inscribed by UNESCO in 2018 sit either side of the Oval Maidan here: high Victorian stone on the east, streamlined 1930s apartment blocks on the west, cricket in the middle. Kala Ghoda holds the museums, the galleries and the best café density in the city.

A single curved seawall from Nariman Point to Girgaon Chowpatty, lined with the largest surviving group of Art Deco buildings anywhere after Miami. The whole city walks it at dusk. Churchgate station behind it is where the Western line begins, which makes this the easiest address in Mumbai to leave from.

Lane after lane of single-trade markets — gold in Zaveri Bazaar, cloth in Mangaldas, kitchenware, spices, wedding paper. Behind them stand the chawls: tenement blocks built for mill workers a century ago, still lived in, and the reason Ganesh Chaturthi is loudest in these streets.

The Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum is the city’s oldest, restored to its full gilded Victorian interior and largely empty on a weekday. Next door, the botanical garden known as Rani Baug is 19th-century planting around a small zoo. Mazagaon’s hillside streets still hold Portuguese-era churches and East Indian Catholic homes.

The belt between Chowpatty and Worli: the 1883 racecourse and its 90 hectares of open turf, Haji Ali Dargah out on its causeway, and Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat where the city’s laundry has been washed in the open since 1890. Breach Candy on the sea side is old-money residential and almost silent after dark.

A century of cotton mills closed and became malls, offices and the densest restaurant cluster in the city. At the western edge, Worli Koliwada is still a working fishing village — the original inhabitants of the island, with the Bandra–Worli Sea Link arcing away overhead.

Distinct from Lower Parel across the tracks: this is the hospital district and the old eastern industrial belt running down to the docks. At Sewri jetty, between November and April, thousands of lesser flamingos feed on the mudflats at low tide, with the Atal Setu bridge now crossing the water behind them.

The one point where the Western and Central lines meet, which makes Dadar the most useful address in Mumbai for a traveller without a car. The flower market runs from about 4am under the bridge; Shivaji Park has produced most of India’s famous batsmen; Matunga next door serves the best South Indian breakfast north of the docks.

The northern boundary of the old island city, marked by a 1669 hilltop fort with a view over what was once a creek. Wadala beside it holds the monorail depot and the Five Gardens grid of 1920s bungalows. This is also the point at which auto rickshaws become legal, which changes how you move for the rest of the trip.

Village lanes, Portuguese-era crosses and painted bungalows overtaken by the city’s best independent restaurants and bars. Walk Chapel Road for murals, Carter Road and Bandstand at sunset, Mount Mary above them. Bandra is where most visitors decide they would live in Mumbai.

Kurla is where the Central and Harbour lines split and where the eastern edge of the Bandra Kurla Complex begins; Ghatkopar just north is the eastern end of Metro Line 1, the one line that crosses the city rather than running along it. Neither is pretty, but between them they are the best-connected point in the suburbs.

One station north and the crowds thin out. Linking Road runs through both for street shopping; the residential lanes behind hold the restaurants Bandra regulars use when Bandra is unbearable. Fifteen minutes to the domestic airport at a quiet hour.

A six-kilometre beach that fills every evening with families, kites and food carts — this is where bhel puri belongs. Prithvi Theatre and its café have been the centre of Mumbai’s theatre scene since 1978. Both airports are close, which is why the beachfront hotels here are the airport hotels people actually enjoy.

Half the city seems to work here — SEEPZ, MIDC, the film and advertising studios. Andheri station is the busiest interchange on the Western line and the meeting point of two metro lines. West of it, Versova beach has been through one of the largest volunteer clean-ups in the world, and Aram Nagar’s low bungalows hold casting studios and small cafés.

A planned enclave around an 18th-century artificial lake, with IIT Bombay on one shore and the neo-classical arcades of Hiranandani Gardens on the other. Crocodiles genuinely live in the lake. It feels nothing like the rest of Mumbai, which is precisely why the tech offices are here.

Film City’s sets sit against Aarey Colony, 1,300 hectares of dairy land and forest inside the municipal boundary where leopards are photographed regularly by camera traps. The Bombay Exhibition Centre next door means hotel prices here move entirely with the trade fair calendar.

The first node of Navi Mumbai, joined to the island city by the Vashi bridge and now by the 21.8 km Atal Setu sea link. Planned from 1972 on a grid, with the APMC wholesale markets that feed Mumbai, a creekside promenade and street widths no part of the old city can offer.

The upper Central suburbs, laid out against the eastern flank of Sanjay Gandhi National Park. Mulund was planned in the 1920s as a garden suburb and still feels like one — wide streets, Gujarati and Maharashtrian food, and trailheads into the Yeoor Hills that most visitors never hear about.

The six-kilometre stretch between Goregaon and Borivali that most visitors pass through without stopping: Mindspace’s office towers on the west side, malls along Link Road, and behind them Madh Island and Aksa beach, reached by a small ferry that has been running for decades.

Sanjay Gandhi National Park covers roughly 87 square kilometres of forest at the northern end of the city — one of the few national parks anywhere inside a metropolis, with a resident leopard population. Cut into its basalt are the Kanheri Caves: 109 Buddhist rock-cut cells and halls carved from the 1st century BCE onwards.

The final station of Mumbai Suburban District, where the Dahisar river comes down out of the national park and the city stops at the Thane district line. Two metro lines terminate here, which has quietly made it one of the easiest northern addresses to leave from early in the morning.

CBD Belapur is Navi Mumbai’s administrative heart, with Nerul and the eight-lane Palm Beach Road running along the creek beside it. The mudflats here hold tens of thousands of lesser flamingos between November and April, and the new Navi Mumbai airport is a short drive south.

A separate municipal corporation and an older settlement than Mumbai itself — the first Indian railway ran from Bori Bunder to Thane in 1853. Around thirty lakes sit inside its boundary, Upvan the best known, with the Yeoor forest above the town and a restaurant scene that no longer needs Mumbai.

North of Dahisar the Western corridor continues into a separate corporation of its own. Behind it, reached by ferry, lie Gorai and Uttan — fishing villages, quiet beaches and the Global Vipassana Pagoda, a gilded dome modelled on Shwedagon and built without a single internal pillar.

The newest node, built against the Kharghar hills with one of the largest urban parks in the country at its centre. In the monsoon the Pandavkada waterfall runs off the ridge above the town and the whole hillside turns green — the closest thing to a hill station inside the metropolitan region.

Western Line terminus, Oval Maidan cricket, Art Deco blocks and the shortest hop to Nariman Point offices.

Museums, galleries, cobbled Rampart Row and the best restaurants in south Mumbai, in six walkable blocks.

Konkan coast an hour by catamaran from the Gateway — second homes, black-sand beaches and offsite villas for Mumbai board retreats.

River-and-paddy country at the foot of the ghats, 70 km out — farmstays, waterfall treks and the quietest offsite venues near Mumbai.

Old money on a green ridge: Banganga Tank, Hanging Gardens, tree-lined Ridge Road and almost no hotels.

Mumbai's corporate engine room: mill compounds turned offices, bars and malls, ten minutes from town by train.

Where the island ends and the suburbs begin: a dargah, a Wednesday novena, a reclaimed forest, and Mumbai's cheapest useful rooms.

Cheap, leafy and startlingly well-connected since the Eastern Freeway — the value base for eastern-corridor business trips.

Split by the highway: a leafy west side of bungalow lanes, an east side of airport hotels, campuses and a ten-minute run to BKC.

India's only vehicle-free hill station, 800 m up the Sahyadris — red earth paths, thirty-odd viewpoints and no engines at all.

Ghat town midway on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway — corporate resorts, monsoon waterfalls, Karla caves and far too much weekend traffic.