Month: February 2017

Thane has gone by the monicker city of lakes for as long as I can remember.

Now I’ve been to the major ones dozens of times. But what would a circuit of the main lakes look and feel like?

Early one morning this week, we set out on a walk connecting seven major ones on the eastern side of the Eastern Express Highway (‘old’ Thane). Here’s what the route looked like:

Here’s a set of screenshots that show progress along the route (the blue dot is where we were; the time stamp is on the status bar at the top), the names of the lakes, and the overall distance:

In general the lakes are in far, far better shape than when I remember them in the nineties. Several of them, though, have yet to live up to their potential as clean, safe public spaces that are woefully scare in urban India. 

Now for some pictures:

Began at Kachrali Lake opposite the Thane Municipal Corporation building. This is easily the best maintained of the lakes, with a large walking track, lighting that works, benches, overhead seating areas, even a tiny boating fountain at the center. Dead trees are colored with amusing, imaginative artwork. I’ve seen this lake being dredged and expanded as a child, just as I’ve seen the TMC building being constructed (and have simply wandered in and played in the construction site, in what were much simpler times). Ironically, I’ve missed taking a picture. So, to the next one:

Masunda Lake, or ‘Talao Pali’, Thane’s flagship lake.

Jail Lake, near, well, Thane Jail.

Ambe Ghosale Lake – or Uthalsar Lake more colloquially, after the area of Thane it’s in. It’s home to a flock of geese by the lakeside.

Brahmala Lake. It’s ringed by a walking track and a garden that has, uniquely, public exercise equipment that’s well maintained and well made use of. Brahmala’s more a large pond than a lake, really, but it does well as an open air community center.

Makhmali Lake. This is a downright tragedy. It’s choked with pond scum and refuse. At this time it’s more a public health hazard than anything else. The photograph is rather charitable.

The last lake of the morning, Siddheshwar. Apparently it’s a miracle the lake even exists. Special interests had wanted to drain the lake and build atop it, stopped only by civic protests. Even today, the lake, while large, is infested with shanties alongside. At least there’s an excuse for a garden alongside.

BONUS: The same evening, we drove to two other major lakes on the other side of the Eastern Express Highway:

Here’s Raileshwar Lake. Large lake, clean water (relatively), but under-developed and under-maintained. Again, this photograph makes the area look better than it actually is.

Finally, the Upwan Lake (or, alternately, Pokhran Lake). This is the largest in the city if you include both side of the highway, and is rather well maintained. It’s the site of a cultural festival every year (Facebook page). 

The experience is a lot like the walk down Bombay’s wester coastline. Some lakes – Kachrali, Upwan, Jail lake, Bhramala – are beautiful, quiet, cool, airy, clean, and actively maintained. Some others have withstood indifferent maintenance to remain communal places – Masunda, Uthalsar, Raileshwar. The rest  – Makhmali, Siddheshwar – have been actively neglected, are in a state of disrepair and are a net negative to the population around. Thane’s lakes have the potential to be the open community areas that the city needs – the population’s risen substantially in the last decade as a spillover from Bombay – but they haven’t lived up to their potential.

This is something I’d been curious about:

Is there a continuous stretch of walkable coastline from Khar to the northern tip of the island of Bombay?

There was only one way to find out.

I began, on a whim, at some 9:50am on Tuesday and ended at about 2:20pm, without a break. Here’s a series of screenshots I took while on the way, with the blue dot marking progress and the time displayed on the status bar at the top:

The short answer is the stretch is mostly navigable along the beach on foot, although increasingly less so as you go northwards.

Though sunny, the weather was pleasant. As long as you’re on the beach there’s a constant breeze from the sea towards the island. This isn’t such a good thing on the stretches of beach strewn with trash.

There are large swathes of clean, quiet, flat beach that are an undiscovered joy to walk along. And equally large expanses of polluted, malodorous, garbage-littered beach. Trash that the sea brings back unfailingly, and that the local shanties toss out.

 Began from Khar Danda. This is one of the jetties north of Carter Road.

Another shot from the jetty, looking north.

From here, you walk across a perilously narrow concrete bridge over a trash filled nallah onto a trash filled stretch stretch of beach. Half a kilometer or so down, you’re at the southern tip of Juhu beach:

Further north:

At the northern end of Juhu beach, past the crowded Juhu Tara stretch. The beach is remarkably clean, with trash cans every hundred feet or so. Possibly the best part of the walk.

At some point, you hit a creek, narrow but long, just north of Juhu. You can see Versova beach right across. But there’s no bridge across it even though it’s only about three dozen feet wide at its narrowest.

So you backtrack, make your way through a shanty, through covered lanes barely wide enough for your shoulders, onto a road that leads eventually to Juhu circle. When you finally reach Versova beach after walking along the Versova link road, it’s 40 minutes and several extra kilometers.

On Versova beach.

Rock beach at Versova, looking south. Unfortunately, Rock Beach means that the southern stretch of Versova beach isn’t a contiguous stretch of sand. You’re mostly walking down Versova Road and dipping down to the beach and back as access allows.

The northern stretch of Versova beach. The faint land mass across is Madh, and you can see the outlines of buildings through the smog. This stretch is, unfortunately, strewn with trash, debris and poop. It’s a tragedy, really.

You can literally feel Madh now. This is when, having walked as far north as I could, I turned right & headed east along the coast.

The Versova jetty with local fishermen and their boats. The smell (stench?) of drying fish is overpowering. It’s clearly a bustling local industry, with ships, cottage cold storage and processing facilities and a trucking area. But it’s filthy, almost certainly unhygenic, and upkeep is ad-hoc and inadequate. This could be a larger, cleaner, happier and vastly more efficient enterprise with the right funds and management.


Finally, the ferry that takes you to Madh.
That’s all, folks. I then navigated my way to the closest road, and caught a rickshaw back to  the Bandra area where I began.
All in all, here’s the route (marked in purple) and other stats from my Fitbit:

It’s been a bittersweet experience. Bombay’s suburban coastline is quiet, over a dozen kilometers long, wide and predominantly sandy. But, it’s been long neglected, and therefore encroached upon and polluted along many stretches. There’s just so much potential here.

Ps: granted the northern tip of the island isn’t really Versova jetty; it’s the northern end of Uttan beach. So rounding the Madh and Uttan peninsulas is another journey.

This is something I’d wanted to do for a while. Unlike most cities, that Bombay is an island means there are natural definitions of Boundary and Circumnavigation. 

On a whim, I set off today from near Bandra around 11:20 or so in the old Maruti Swift. Here’s the route I took: 

Start -> SV road -> Khar subway -> Western Express Highway -> Dahisar -> Kashimira -> Ahmedabad highway junction -> Ghodbunder -> Eastern Express Highway -> road to Deonar -> Eastern Freeway -> Regal Circle -> Gateway/Apollo Bunder -> Colaba Causeway -> Afghan Church -> detour to Bhabha Auditorium -> Mantralay -> Marine Drive -> Pedder Road -> Annie Besant Road -> Worli Sea Face -> Sea Link -> SV Road -> End
Here’s a set of screenshots that show the route and progress. The blue dot is my location at the time on the status bar at the top. 

Driving 114 km took 5 hours (well, actually 4. Spent 1 hour changing a flat tyre on Colaba Causeway; then getting it fixed at the next petrol pump). 

Many parts of the route were picturesque, smooth and quiet: The Dahisar – Ghodbunder stretch. The Eastern Freeway. The Navy Nagar complex. Marine Drive in the afternoon.

Others were a noisy, hostile, clogged mess: Khar Subway, parts of Ghodbunder road, parts of Causeway, Pedder Road. On these stretches, podcasts and music were a necessary distraction. 

Could have been far quicker if I’d planned it; started at, say 5am. All in all, nice time though. 

Cafe X, by a Thiel Fellow. Robot operates multiple machines at once, takes customized orders via an iPad and makes a drink in 20 seconds.

Grinding, brewing and making your own coffee’s going to go the way of hand-written letters. A craft you pursue at home or with fellow enthusiasts for the joy of the process.

Outside of that, you’ll still pay a premium for the experience of a specialty coffee made by a highly skilled barista, in the same manner you’ll pay for a fine handmade leather bag. 

It looks like the inflection point for automation in everyday life is close. Self-driving cars. Delivery by drone. 3D printed items that previously required people operating tools to make. Automated fast food. Routine diagnosis & surgery by robots. Investment advisory & tax optimisation. All of these either exist commercially or will in the next couple years. 

(Via NexDraft)