Experience in Mumbai, India by Pawan

What is it like to live in Mumbai? Would you recommend it? What is the city like?

It is a big city to get lost while wandering around the streets. Many narrow lanes, even after ten or twenty years, will evade one for long and in case they might simply not exist. The city like others has its boundaries defined by fast paced economy. It is warm and most people are actually humble, that is the only great thing I found about it.

What is the student lifestyle like in Mumbai?

A student is more likely to act and mimic as if he or she were a young professional. For students from outside, it can take time to settle into and towards the tune of the city. Yet you alone have the gaze to watch it from distance and sense how the city matches up to your life as you explore it on your own. The effect will last longer. Initially, it will allow your uneasy footsteps to strongly pick up varied sense of smell, sight, voice, noise through food, fabric, objects, and languages. Then you see people and their movement. After a time, this sense goes away when the wheel of city (with money, matter, and time) comes for your feet to drag and rush them for the next train. If it does not, then you have survived the humdrum existence in reality.

Now there can be differences in the experiences and it can be observed through geographical and historical space attached to different localities like north, middle, south Mumbai. Moreover, it will be bound, defined, and refined by the campus, groups, class, locality, and general area of interest. Keep a note to know people from varied socio-economical backgrounds. It will help you to be more humane.

How much does it cost to live in Mumbai?

On an average a student or a young person can live with 180-190 euro per month towards a modest life without making extreme holes in the pocket. It includes flat sharing, meals, transportation, and little bit of leisure. For a more upward existence in the city, aim to spend 400-infinite euros per month (depends on your choice of life) and you will have the view from top. If not, then go for the former and you will have some soul preserving moments for your whole life.

Is it difficult to find accommodation in Mumbai? Is there any advice you can give?

It is not difficult in a direct sense. There are mundane papered bureaucratic measures to follow with lease agreement, and sweat swearing walks through middlemen for one month extra rent which is outfront initially and that is all there is. If you are a sweet talker then more power to you. Or you can be more curious and explore internet to find direct accomodation through Airbnb and Facebook groups.

What is the food like? What are your favourite dishes?

Me Gastronomy me life me sing me think. Food is great because of spices and masala. You can find the cheapest meals and the most expensive ones within a mile in most of the city area.

Taste street foods that are fried especially in this or that flour creating fritters of many kinds with different pulses, vegetables, and meat. For hotels and restaurants (midscale and upscale) you can find varieties to taste multiethnic dishes coming from a plural India and also many of the cross bordering dishes. Most of the food is made in different masalas and is not spicy generally. There are global food chains too, do not worry.

Me favourite food according to me taste buds is Indian burger, locally known as Vada-Pav, or glocally could be called as potato-bun fritter. However, there are desi meat dishes too which I love and other little little things which I like.

Apologize for not providing anything concrete. Food means many thing to many people. It is better to experience for oneself.

What places would you recommend visiting in Mumbai?

You are visiting a metropolitan city of a developing country which has been developed haphazardly due to conditions forceful and unforceful. Yet, the varieties abound to explore, like wildly in balance:

- Bandra Fort (breathe colonial past)
- Marine Drive (go, there, rain or wind)
- Churchgate Station (sit, relax, watch)
- Bar (sit, sail, eat, and leave)
- Malls (look, wonder, glass, see)

Or you can feel advanced and cultured for a sophisticated cultural act by visiting:

- Musuems, Galleries, gigs(?), Clubs et al - Look in Timeout Mumbai Magazine. Uh, huh.

Finally, you must simply walk, or learn to walk everywhere with dust and sweat. It pays back to you in good health.

Is it good to eat out in Mumbai? Can you tell us your favourite spots?

Yes, it is. No favorite spots. Maybe night time around some railway stations for tea and sweet cheesy buns.

Is the nightlife good in Mumbai? Where is good to go?

Whose concept is it and what does it mean? Pubs are many, boot yourself. Clubs are many, suit yourself. Or live with a notion known as ekla cholo re (walk alone)—it means more than that because it is a song with a sentiment—inspired from the poet beloved, Rabindranath Tagore.

The whole city has a feel for Nightlife. Go anywhere and take in all that you see and hear.

What advice would you give future students heading to Mumbai?

Mumbai is a warm and welcoming city because its people are more humane than the other places I have been to. It accepts you and opens a new life. The city itself is like a learning platform that changes with each mistake that it makes. Yet it can also close doors and make you feel the harsh wrath of social divisions and inequality which are increasingly being found in all the metropolitan cities of the world.

As students you will not have a proper student experience through campus oriented learning via colleges as most of them are not equipped to tackle the advancement of knowledge & change and those few who are, are simply moving through a slow phased manner of updating education, literacy, and development due to lack of autonomous human and technological resources.


You will learn more about it through its people-scape, buildings, and aimless wandering. It will leave a sense of professionalism in you even before you become one. The city is a magical chapter itself and you must have a thirst or a pair of curious eyes or the wonder of a child to explore it. It will love you and give solace when isolation arrives. However, the city like other city can bind you blindly and quickly in a life of endless struggle. Be aware and be critical, the city will understand you more and offer accordingly.

In memories, it will be with you.

Come and explore Mumbai for a holistic development of self and human sensitivity, if you truly are an open minded person to test your mettle in anything. It can be enriching as the most viable intercultural communication experience.