Carter Road Promenade

Carter Road has a sea-facing location, with high-priced residential localities, connecting Khar-Danda in the north with Turner Road (Bandra) in the south. Carter Road Promenade is located along the Arabian sea on the west side of Bandra, a highly coveted location for its coastlines. The walkway is 4,800 feet long with a small chess-board ground, a large gazebo, a vermicompost bed and solar and wind energy. The walkway was redeveloped in 2008 as part of the larger movement in the city of Mumbai to reclaim public spaces and to protect Mumbai’s coastline.

The promenade has become a center for acoustic music performances, both rehearsed cover songs and drum circle jams, with audience participation. Other activities include free yoga/aerobics classes, Brazilian martial arts and dancing /music (capoeira) demonstrations, poetry readings and many other impromptu events, all open to public participation. These events happen amidst the endless stream of strollers and joggers. Many benches offer repose to usually older citizens or lovers; in addition the rock tidepools are also colonized by lovers silhouetted against the sun setting in the Arabian Sea. There are also some small children's slides and swings. At the Khar end, where the Union Park Road slips down pali Hill, is a cluster of westernized restaurants and cafés, with innovative names like "Oh so stoned", where a wide variety of international cuisines are available. Amidst the Rupee 200 cups of coffee remains a pan-bidi store.

Carter Road was named after Carter Perry, a suburban collector during the British Raj. In the 1970s, it was an quiet and idyllic road curving by the sea, fringed on one side by mangroves and old villas with palm trees on the other. Once a baby baleen whale washed up on the shore, attracting onlookers who would collect the melting blubber in bottles as a cure for rheumatism, until it was cut up into pieces by the Bombay Municipal Corporation for disposal.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the mangroves became an open toilet for the hordes of recent arrivals to Bombay. The late 1990s saw the mangroves festooned with multicolored plastic bags that ended up in the sea, washed out from land, and returned via the high tide, snagged on branches. In the 2000s, the entire promenade was revived, re-tiled, and cleaned and trees were planted.