Two of Mumbai's most popular religious sites, one Hindu, the other Muslim, can be reached by following Bhulabhai Desai Road north from Malabar Hill as far as Prabhu Chowk, through the exclusive suburb of Breach Candy (bus #132 from Colaba). Alternatively, make for Mumbai Central and head due northwest to Vatsalabai Desai Chowk (also bus #132).

 

Mahalakshmi Mandir is joined to Bhulabhai Desai Road by an alley lined with stalls selling puja offerings and devotional pictures. Mumbai's favourite devi , Lakshmi , goddess of beauty and prosperity - the city's most sought-after attributes - is here propitiated with coconuts, sweets, lengths of shimmering silk and giant lotus blooms. At weekends, queues for darshan extend right the way across the courtyard and down the main steps beyond. Gifts pile so high that the temple pujaris run a money-spinning sideline reselling them. Their little shop, to the left of the entrance, is a good place to buy cut-price saris and brocades infused with lucky Lakshmi-energy. While you're here, find out what your future holds by joining the huddle of devotees pressing rupees onto the rear wall of the shrine room. If your coin sticks, you'll be rich.

A temple has stood on this rocky outcrop for well over a thousand years. Not until the eighteenth century, however, when the hitherto swampy western edge of the city was drained, was the present building erected. Legend has it that the goddess herself told a contractor working on the project that unless her icon - which she said would soon reappear from the sea where it had been cast by Muslim invaders - was reinstated in a temple on the site, the breach-wall would not hold back the waves. Sure enough, the next day a Lakshmi deity was fished out of the silt by workmen, to be installed on this small headland, where it has remained to the present day.

Another site shrouded in myth is the mausoleum of the Muslim saint, Afghan mystic Haji Ali Bukhari , occupying a small islet in the bay just north of the Mahalakshmi temple. Islamic lore has two legends regarding its founding, though both agree he was sailing to India after performing Haj at Mecca; the first says that the coffin was washed ashore on these rocks after it had, on strict instructions from the saint, been cast into the sea off the coast of what is now Pakistan. The other is that the saint, when he realized he wouldn't reach India before his death, asked his disciples - the Fazla brothers - to build his tomb where he died. The construction took the brothers one year and was completed in 1865. The tomb is said to be very effective in answering prayers and the locals say that believers of all faiths make supplications here - it's even claimed British generals gave thanks to the saint after winning battles. It's connected to the mainland by a narrow concrete causeway , only passable at low tide. When not immersed in water, its entire length is lined with beggars who change one-rupee pieces into ten-paise coins for pilgrims. The prime sites, closer to the snack bars that flank the main entrance, near the small mosque, and the gateway to the tomb itself, are allocated in a strict pecking order. If you want to make a donation, spare a thought for the unfortunates in the middle. After all the commotion, the tomb itself comes as something of a disappointment. Its white Moghul domes and minarets look a lot less exotic close up than when viewed from the shore, silhouetted against the sun as it drops into the Arabian Sea.

A couple of kilometres further up the coast, the densely packed districts of central Mumbai are broken by a huge, empty expanse of dusty brown grass. The optimistically named Mahalakshmi racecourse , founded in 1879, is the home of the Mumbai Turf Club and a bastion of the city's Anglophile elite. Regular meetings take place here at weekends between November and March. If you fancy a hack yourself, the Amateur Riding Club also rents out horses during the week (except Wednesdays).