Mumbai, India- Laundry, Gandhi, and more

Mumbai, known as Bombay until it was renamed in 1995, is the largest city in India and part of the sixth largest metro area globally, with a city population of 12.5 million. The overwhelming impression is a Very Crowded City, bursting at the seams of overcrowding.

A busy intersection with Very Important Big Buildings

Dhobi Ghat Laundry

For 18-20 hours a day, over 7000 people flog, dye, and bleach clothes in outdoor concrete wash pens, dry them on ropes, press them, and transport the clean garments throughout the city. The washers, known as dhobis, beat clothes with a stick to remove the fine dust throughout the city. Over 100,000 clothes are washed each day. It is claimed to be the largest outdoor laundry in the world. The area is so popular with tourists that the city built an overlook on one of the highways that can accommodate the number of viewers on buses.

About 200 families live full-time in Dhobi Ghat

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The laundry was built in 1890 by the British and operates mostly the same as when built

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Two of the concrete wash pens. They are equipped with “flogging stones” that clothes are put on and beaten with a stick to get the very fine dust out.

Some interesting details: satellite dishes are everywhere; left center is the train station that adjoins with people hanging out of the trains as they go by; blue tarps are in abundance, most turned brown by the dust; all dirt walkways and roads, nothing is paved; clothes are hung on ropes on big racks to dry.

Former Lodging of Mahatma Gandhi and now a museum dedicated to him

One of the more popular writings posted throughout the museum

Two of the roomful of dioramas depicting Gandhi’s life. In this one he is made to move from a railroad car because he is Indian, not British,

The depiction of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 when British troops fired on an unarmed crowd killing several hundred people and injuring many more.