Carter Road, Bandra: The Real Places Behind The Café Across Carter Road

I get asked one question more than any other about my novel. Is the café real?

The honest answer is a little complicated, so I’ll give you the short version first. The story is fiction. The map is not. Every place Adi and Fatima walk through in The Café Across Carter Road is somewhere I spend actual time, and I wrote most of it with those streets still in my shoes.

So if you’re reading the book and wondering where to stand, or you’re in Bandra and want to see what I saw, here’s the route.

Carter Road, Bandra

Everything starts here. Carter Road is the seafront promenade in Bandra West, and it’s a walk I’ve taken more evenings than I can count. It has a long stretch of railing facing the sea, gardens behind it, a line of cafés across the road, and a steady crowd of joggers and evening walkers who all seem to know exactly where they’re going.

The book opens on this view, from a window seat in a café:

“Across Carter Road, the promenade was nearly empty. A few joggers. An elderly couple walking slowly beside the sea. A street dog asleep beneath a bench.”

That is a real kind of evening on Carter Road, usually in the rain, usually around six. The railing is where Adi first notices a girl holding a book under a yellow umbrella, “bright enough to stand apart from the grey evening.”

If you only have time for one stop, stand at that railing near sunset. Watch the tetrapods take the waves. In June the whole place smells of wet earth from the gardens, which I tried to describe in the book as “a damp, green smell that rose from the promenade gardens each evening.” I’m still not sure I got it right. You’ll have to go and check.

The library café

The café itself sits across the road from the promenade, and it’s the corner table by the window that matters. In the novel it’s where Adi sits with an unfinished manuscript and a coffee stain, and where Harshita, the librarian-barista, notices everything.

I won’t name the real café in a post that’s meant to age well, since places change hands and menus change faster. I’ll say this instead: if you want a Carter Road café with a view of the sea, pick a window seat, order something warm, and give it an hour. That’s the entire plan the book recommends.

Pali Village

Pali Village is where the book slows down. Fatima drags Adi out of the café on a dry Saturday in the middle of the monsoon, after he admits he has lived in Bandra for three years without really exploring it. Her verdict: “Adi, that is genuinely embarrassing.”

They walk the “narrow lanes behind Pali Naka, past old cottages with sloped roofs and peeling paint,” under banyan trees and past a bakery that has made the same mawa cake for forty years. The village is quiet, leafy and a little behind the rest of Bandra in the best way.

Go in the late afternoon, on foot, with no destination. That is the only way Pali Village works.

Subko, tucked behind a gate

Fatima finds Subko first, “behind a gate that looked more like someone’s front porch than a café.” It’s a real place in Pali Village, and it’s where I go when I want coffee and enough quiet to actually think.

It became a scene in the book because it became a habit in my life. Fatima orders a long black before Adi has finished reading the menu, and when he asks what’s good, she says: “I already know what is good here. It is coffee.”

That’s the whole review. Opening hours and prices change, so check before you go.

Mount Mary Church

The book’s photo section includes Mount Mary Church, and it belongs on any Bandra walk. It sits on the hill above the sea, a short distance from the promenade side of Bandra. I include it here because Bandra is a suburb of old Portuguese-era lanes and churches as much as cafés, and the novel tries to honour that.

Also Read: God in the Margins of the Mount Mary Bandra

And then the rest of Mumbai

Bandra is where the story lives, but Adi and Fatima don’t stay in it. They take a train to Marine Drive, eat fish curry in Dadar, and fight and make up over street food in Ghatkopar. I’ve written a separate guide for that route: A Mumbai Date Itinerary Inspired by Adi and Fatima. Start there once you’ve done Carter Road.

A simple Bandra walk, if you want one

Carter Road railing at sunset
A window seat at a Carter Road café
A slow walk through the lanes of Pali Village
Coffee at Subko
Mount Mary Church on the way back

Give it an afternoon and an evening. Bring an umbrella, a book, and a phone with enough battery for photos.

Read it where it happens

If you’re visiting Bandra, you don’t need to carry the paperback. The ebook reads perfectly well on a phone with the free Kindle app, so you can open a chapter at the railing and check whether I got the view right. You can also download a free sample first and see whether Adi and Fatima are your kind of people.

Get The Café Across Carter Road on Kindle → Click Here

Frequently asked questions

Is the café in The Café Across Carter Road a real place? The story is fiction, but every location in it is real and somewhere I spend time. The library café sits across from the Carter Road promenade in Bandra, and the book’s photo section shows the spot that inspired it.

Where is Carter Road? Carter Road is a seafront promenade in Bandra West, Mumbai, with a long railing facing the Arabian Sea, gardens, cafés and a regular crowd of walkers and joggers.

Is The Café Across Carter Road based on a true story? No. The characters aren’t copies of real people, but almost every scene began as something I noticed while living in this city: a couple arguing quietly at a corner table, someone reading alone in the rain.

What other places appear in the book? Pali Village, Subko, Chimbai, Marine Drive, Ab’s in Dadar, Khau Galli in Ghatkopar and Mount Mary Church.

Can I read the book on my phone? Yes. The Kindle edition works with the free Kindle app on phones and iPads, and you can read a free sample first.

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