There are landmarks of the pop culture, none of the fashion photographers, none of the magazines en vogue, none of the models with endless legs would ever miss a still, a story, a fashion emotion having a …laundry as background. Yes, yes, do you know the laundries with washing machines and port-holes at sight, with a lot of people and juicy gossip about Hollywood stars?
Well, but L.A. hasn`t got what Mumbai has! Parole!
Mumbai has perhaps, the unique and biggest open-air laundry, a genuine tourist attraction, a site where dhobis(that is, the men who do the washing, most of them being migrants from other parts of India) painstakingly work amongst rows of concrete and stone.

There are people who have been living and working there for ages.
Clothes are collected from homes, hotels, restaurants, are washed, dried and ironed, then brought back to the customers. Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat, founded in 1890, is the biggest one in the city and it used to service the British population in Mumbai, in olden times, being actually an association, Dhobi Kalyan and Audyogik Vikas Co-op Society; it even appears in the Guinness Book of Records. As a matter of fact, I learned that in March 2011, it achieved the world record for the largest number of people simultaneously hand-washing clothes in a single location-496.
You are not allowed to enter Mahalaxmi, therefore, you have to content yourself with some pictures you can take from above, but in Colaba (we visited it with our Be the local tours guide) it would be pity not to do it, you will see a super interesting maze, so realistic and so shocking, at least for us, Europeans…

It`s not as if you were in a Hollywood laundry, it`s not glamour and fashion but it`s pure life… An unforgettable truth!

Colored curiosity: the laundry is hanged between 2 ropes, not with pegs