Discover Mumbai

Shopping in Mumbai: A Local's Guide to Markets, Bazaars and What to Take Home

Travel Essentials · Discover Mumbai Team · 7 October 2026 · 8 min read

Shopping in Mumbai: A Local's Guide to Markets, Bazaars and What to Take Home

Mumbai shops the way it eats: on the street, in a hurry and with an opinion about where to go. There are pavement markets where the first price is a joke and old bazaars that have traded the same goods in the same lanes for a hundred years, alongside air-conditioned malls and a handful of very good design stores. This guide is how people who live here shop: which market is for what, how to bargain, which days things are shut, and what is worth carrying home.

The short version

  • Street fashion: Colaba Causeway, Fashion Street, Hill Road and Linking Road in Bandra, and Lokhandwala in Andheri West. Bargain at all of them.
  • The old bazaars: Crawford Market, Mangaldas Market, Zaveri Bazaar and Bhuleshwar, all within a walk of each other in South Mumbai. Most close on Sundays.
  • Saris and Indian clothes: Dadar West, around Ranade Road and Kelkar Road.
  • Fixed prices and air-conditioning: the malls in Lower Parel, BKC and the suburbs, and stores like Good Earth.
  • What to take home: Mahim halwa, Lalbaug masala, Kolhapuri chappals, a Paithani, an old film poster from Chor Bazaar, and Alphonso mangoes if it is April or May.

How shopping works here

Bargaining. Shops with printed price tags and a till have fixed prices; asking for a discount there is rude. Street stalls and most market shops expect you to bargain. Offer about half the first price, settle somewhere near 60%, keep it friendly, and be ready to walk away, which is the most effective move there is. Prices at the stalls most used by visitors, on Fashion Street and the Causeway, start especially high. Our money guide has more.

Paying. Stalls take cash or UPI, the QR-code payment every vendor displays; cards work in shops with a fixed address and in malls. Foreign visitors can get a prepaid UPI wallet; the money guide explains how. Carry small notes, because a ₹500 note at a stall selling a ₹200 scarf is a problem.

Opening days. Street stalls open from late morning, around 10 or 11 AM, until 9 or 10 PM, and are busiest in the evening and at weekends. Each market also has a usual weekly closing day, though individual shops vary:

Market Usually closed
Crawford Market, Zaveri Bazaar, Mangaldas Market Sunday
Chor Bazaar Friday (but the Friday morning street market is the best time to go)
Dadar market Monday
Colaba Causeway, Fashion Street, Bhuleshwar Open every day
Linking Road Mostly open every day
Hill Road Open every day; some shops close on Monday or Thursday

Everything else. There are no trial rooms at street stalls, so check sizes and seams by holding things up. Assume any famous label at a stall is a copy. Keep your phone and wallet in a front pocket in crowded markets. Carry a cloth bag, because plastic carry bags have been banned in Maharashtra since 2018.

Street markets for clothes and accessories

Colaba Causeway. A kilometre of pavement stalls between Regal Cinema and the Gateway: scarves, silver and costume jewellery, sandals, bags, brass and books, backed by old cafes. The most visitor-heavy market in the city, so bargain firmly. Good for gifts. Our Colaba guide covers the area.

Fashion Street. Several hundred stalls along MG Road opposite Azad Maidan, near Churchgate, selling cheap clothes, especially jeans, T-shirts, shirts and jackets. Quality is mixed and opening prices are high, so look closely and bargain hard.

Hill Road and Linking Road, Bandra. The suburbs’ best-known shopping streets. Hill Road is better for clothes, fabric and accessories, with chaat around Elco Market; Linking Road is a long run of stalls and shops for shoes, bags and clothes, where the street stalls bargain and the shops do not. Our Bandra guide has more.

Lokhandwala market, Andheri West. The market locals in the western suburbs recommend for trendier clothes, dresses, co-ords, shoes, bags and jewellery, with fewer visitors than Bandra or Colaba. Busiest from about 4 to 8 PM. Convenient if you are staying near the airport; our Andheri guide covers the area.

Which one? For a first visit, the Causeway, because it is close to everything else in the south. For the best range of current styles at street prices, Lokhandwala or Hill Road. For the cheapest jeans and basics, Fashion Street, if you are patient.

The old bazaars of South Mumbai

North of the Fort, a tangle of old markets has been trading wholesale for generations. They are hot, crowded and wonderful, and you can walk between them in a morning. Go on a weekday, not a Sunday.

  • Crawford Market. The 1869 market hall, officially Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Mandai, for fruit, dry fruit, spices and imported groceries, and the place to buy Alphonso mangoes in April and May. The lanes around it sell household goods and festive decorations.
  • Mangaldas Market. Behind Crawford Market, a covered market of fabric shops, for silk, cotton and dress materials by the metre.
  • Zaveri Bazaar. The city’s jewellery market, lanes of gold and diamond shops, said to handle much of India’s gold trade. Busiest on Dhanteras and at wedding season.
  • Bhuleshwar. Old lanes of temples and markets selling flowers, puja supplies, decorations and kitchenware, open every day. Nearby, Lohar Chawl is the wholesale market for lights.
  • Chor Bazaar. Further north, the “thieves’ market” for old brass, gramophones, furniture, film posters and a great deal of good reproduction. Assume nothing is genuinely antique unless proved otherwise, and come on a Friday morning for the street market.

Our Girgaon guide and Fort and Kala Ghoda guide cover the neighbouring streets.

Saris and Indian clothes

Dadar West is where much of Mumbai buys its saris and wedding clothes. Around Ranade Road, Kelkar Road and Kabutar Khana are long-established shops such as Dadar Emporium on Kelkar Road, Roop Sangam near Kabutar Khana, and Rane’s Paithani on Ranade Road, which specialises in the Paithani, Maharashtra’s handwoven silk sari, known for its rich borders and pallu, often with peacock motifs. Nalli in Matunga, one stop away, is known for Kanjivaram and Mysore silk. Our Dadar and Shivaji Park guide has a walk through the area.

For handwoven cotton and khadi, the Khadi Gramodyog Bhavan on DN Road in the Fort sells kurtas, fabric and village-industry goods at fixed prices. If you buy fabric at Mangaldas Market, any local tailor will make it up, though good ones need a few days. Shopping for a wedding? Our wedding shopping guide covers bridal saris, lehengas, sherwanis, jewellery and rentals.

Things that say Mumbai or Maharashtra

  • Kolhapuri chappals. Maharashtra’s handmade leather sandals. You will find them on the Causeway and Linking Road; in Mahim, Bhagwan Footwear near Sitladevi Mandir is known for colourful pairs made with Paithani borders.
  • A Paithani. The grand Maharashtrian silk sari, from the Dadar shops above. Genuine handwoven ones can cost tens of thousands of rupees; machine-made versions are much cheaper, so ask which you are looking at.
  • Warli art. The white-on-earth stick-figure painting of the Warli people from the hills north of Mumbai, sold as paintings and prints on the Causeway and in Kala Ghoda.
  • An old film poster or a gramophone record from Chor Bazaar. Many posters are reprints, which is fine, as long as you are paying a reprint price.
  • Design pieces. Good Earth sells Indian textiles, tableware and home goods at fixed prices, with stores next to the Taj in Colaba, in Raghuvanshi Mills in Lower Parel and on Juhu Tara Road. The design shops of Kala Ghoda are good for smaller gifts.

Food to take home

  • Mahim halwa. Thin, chewy sheets of halwa sprinkled with dry fruit, made in Mahim for about two centuries. Joshi Budhakaka in Mahim’s Kapad Bazaar is the name associated with it.
  • Masala from Lalbaug. Shops in the Lalbaug spice market roast and grind masalas to order. Buy a small packet of a house garam masala; our Lower Parel guide explains where.
  • Faral. Maharashtrian snacks such as chakli and chivda from the Dadar sweet shops, at their best around Diwali; our Diwali guide names the shops.
  • Coffee. Subko, which roasts Indian specialty coffee in a restored 1925 bungalow in Bandra, sells its beans to take away.
  • Alphonso mangoes, in season from about April to May, from Crawford Market. Check your airline’s and your country’s rules before packing fruit.

Books

Kitab Khana, in a 150-year-old building near Flora Fountain in the Fort, is one of the city’s best-loved bookshops, open every day. A short walk away, the pavement booksellers where DN Road meets MG Road have sold new, second-hand and pirated books for decades; bargain, and check that a new book is not a photocopy.

Electronics

Lamington Road, near Grant Road station, is the city’s electronics market, for computer parts, accessories, cameras and cables, often below the printed price. Ask for a GST invoice and check that the warranty is valid in India. Be wary of very cheap phones and laptops anywhere in the city; refurbished and grey-market stock is common.

Malls

For fixed prices, air-conditioning and international brands:

  • Phoenix Palladium and High Street Phoenix, Lower Parel: one of the city’s best-known malls, built in a former cotton mill. See our Lower Parel guide.
  • Jio World Drive, BKC: an open-air mall with India’s first Apple Store. See our BKC guide.
  • Phoenix Marketcity, Kurla, and Infiniti Mall in Malad and Andheri, for the suburbs.

Practical notes

  • Monsoon. The street markets thin out in heavy rain, and some stalls do not open at all on the worst days. Malls are the rainy-day fallback.
  • Festivals. Markets are at their busiest, and most fun, in the fortnight before Diwali and in the weeks before Christmas.
  • Where to stay if shopping is the point of the trip: see our where-to-stay guide.

Sources

Header photo: A table at Chor Bazaar by urbzoo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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