“You’re going to cycle across Mumbai? Are you sure? Nobody does that here.” The face of the hotel receptionist when she realises I want to borrow a bike to ride around the city centre at rush hour is a picture of confusion and concern. In the end she opts for a head wobble, which could mean yes, or no ... or anything in between.

Mumbai – the sixth biggest megacity in the world with a metropolitan population of around 20 million people – is notorious for its chaotic traffic. Swarms of black and yellow taxis and auto-rickshaws jostle with smoke-belching buses and battered Maruti-Suzukis in a cacophony of honking horns and revving engines. No one takes the slightest notice of road markings; there is no congestion charging or bus rapid transit; no bus lanes or bike lanes.

While private cars account for just 1.6% of journeys made in the city, their number has swelled 55% over the past seven years to 2.3m. There is a tradition of newspaper vendors, milkmen and dabbawalas – so-called “livelihood cyclists” – who depend on sturdy, black locally made bikes to go about their business, but, as the UCL’s Andrew Harris argues, transport policy is firmly geared towards the car. Cycling is seen by many as a low-status way of getting around.

So, who would risk their lives, and their lungs, cycling in a city like this? I meet up with Martin Wright, a director at non-profit Forum for the Future, who was a regular bike commuter in London before he moved to Mumbai a year ago. While the city’s traffic looks random and frankly scary to someone fresh off the plane like me, Martin insists it is more akin to a ballet, with each driver skilfully playing their part.

“When I first moved here people told me: ‘Nobody commutes by bike in Mumbai. You’d have to be mad. The bus drivers, the truck drivers, they won’t see you … they’ll kill you,’” says Martin. “My first experience cycling in Mumbai was at 6am on a borrowed bike – very early, before rush hour [which starts in Mumbai at around 9.30am] – and it was fine. Drivers in Mumbai are very good at anticipating what you’re going to do, and they’re really keen not to bump into anything.”

Martin was soon cycle-commuting from his apartment in Colaba to his office in Nariman Point – the only person in a block of 700 workers arriving by bike. (He has since been joined by cycling colleagues Anna Warrington and Sarah Tulej.)

“Sometimes it feels like we’re the only people cycling to work in Mumbai,” he says, “but somehow the experience feels safer than cycling in London. The drivers aren’t as antagonistic – I’ve not had a cross word the whole time I’ve been here – and there’s less road rage, less aggression, less confrontation. People are hooting their horns all the time, but it’s not in anger: it’s to communicate where they are and where they’re going.”

When Martin, Anna and me saddle up and hit the streets of Colaba at 7.30am I’m surprised at how pleasant and safe it feels. Touring around Sassoon Docks and the market – and even on busier roads near the Oval Maidan and past the CST train station – I never feel in danger. All I can think is: why don’t more people do this?

Cycling in south Mumbai with Martin Wright and Anna Warrington: ‘Just signal clearly and don’t make any erratic manoeuvres’

We ride a few miles around the south of the city, finishing in the Fort area where we are joined by cycling advocate Firoza Suresh, quite probably the only female Indian bike commuter in Mumbai.

The second daughter of a middle-class Muslim family from the city’s Mulund area, Firoza learned to cycle at eight so she could run errands for her mother – she would hire a bike for 30 minutes a day because her father did not have the money to buy one. In 2010, she rediscovered cycling with a passion and has since founded the SmartCommute and Cycle2Work initiatives, and organised a cycling flash mob at Bandra train station.

“It’s an exciting way to move around the city,” says Firoza, who has had a few scares but no major accidents. “I’ve got a car but it’s gathering dust. When people say it is unsafe, I ask them: ‘Have you even tried? Go and try.’ You have to concentrate 100%, and be aware of everything around you, but I love cycling in Mumbai.”

Firoza started commuting between her home in Juhu and work in Dadar. A taxi ride in rush hour could take two hours; jammed into a packed train (with a walk at one end and an auto-rickshaw at the other) would take an hour and a quarter. By bike, the journey took just 35 minutes.



So why do so few people cycle in the city? Firoza thinks many potential converts are put off by poor road surfaces: potholes and missing paving blocks are a constant danger; the heat, combined with the general lack of office shower facilities, means arriving at work by bike would be a sweaty affair; while the lack of secure cycle storage (land is expensive in Mumbai so people have to park bikes on the street) means theft is a problem.

Firoza believes the arrival of international brands like Trek is removing the stigma from cycling, which many have seen as a low-status mode of transport. “Cycling has become aspirational and recreational cycling is really taking off,” she says. “You see lots of riders on weekend mornings along the seafront – and then those riders start to consider using their bikes during the week too. Some might commute one day a week by bike. It’s a start.”

That view is backed by Sammy Beri, who owns the Bharat Cycle Company in Kalbadevi. The retail business, started by his grandfather in the 1920s, sells hundreds of bikes a month and sales are increasing 10-15% a year: “Now you have cycles for all incomes. Owning an expensive bike can be a status symbol.”

Group cycle rides are booming, with many clubs putting on regular weekend rides and giving cyclists a sense of community. But it isn’t just recreational cycling that is growing, according to Amit Bhowmik, who created and runs India’s first social networking site for cyclists, which has doubled registered users to 14,000 in the past 18 months.

“Six or seven years ago I’d spot very few cyclists on the highways, but on a weekend outing now you’ll see large groups. These are hobby cyclists: middle class car-owners who cycle for fitness. But cycling isn’t just about weekend rides. Urban cycling is definitely growing.”

Cycling across Mumbai with Firoza Suresh. ‘You have to concentrate 100% – and be aware of everything around you’

As I hit the street again with Firoza and a friend for the six-mile ride north to Worli the sun has risen high in the sky and the traffic is heavier. The din of horns is sometimes deafening as cars dart and dive into small spaces, exploiting the tiniest gaps. The road widens to six lanes in places, but there could be eight or more cars jostling for that space, the white lines not even the vaguest guide. The heat is getting oppressive but we stay alert and try to move with the flow, sticking to the left as much as possible and keeping an eye out for potholes and drain covers whose grilles face the direction of travel – lying in wait to trap unwary bike tyres.



A year spent as a cycle courier when I first moved to London – and a regular commute of 100 miles a week in the capital now – stands me in good stead. I can see it’s not for everyone, but squeezing through the gaps when the traffic is at a standstill is a pleasure – and cycling in Mumbai seems no worse to me than rush hour in central London or New York.



Mumbai even had its own fledgling version of a bike share scheme for a while. Raj Janagam co-founded Cycle Chalao in 2009, and the project ran for a little over a year – between Mulund train station and a nearby college – with 30 bikes and a user base of around 750. Raj, who now runs social entrepreneur firm UnLtd Hyderabad, says a lack of advertising and poor support from municipal authorities put paid to his plans. Cycle Chalao later won a tender to start a bike share in nearby Pune but it never got off the ground due to more foot-dragging by the local authorities. Raj believes there is still a public appetite for such a scheme in Mumbai: “The government needs to own complete responsibility and consider it as a public transportation project, especially in terms of costs.”

“There’s a critical need for people not just in Mumbai but also other large metropolitan cities in India to adopt greener modes of transport,” adds Amit. “The bicycle is the cheapest rapid-mobility commute solution around; yet our cities are evolving around cars and the needs of car owners.”

For a fraction of the 16bn rupee (£160m) cost of the eight-lane Bandra-Worli Sea Link toll bridge, Mumbai’s transport authorities could have transformed cycling and public transport in the city.

“The potential for cycling in Mumbai is massive,” says Martin. “It’s almost completely flat, for nine months of the year it doesn’t rain, and you’ll never get cold here. It’s a fantastic place to cycle.”

If only more people would just go and try.