The Dhobi Ghat is the world’s largest outdoor laundry. Built in 1895, this laundry washes thousands of clothes each day. The city of Bombay rents over 800 washing pens, each of them fitted with a “beating stone.” Clothes are soaked, slapped, spun, and even ironed in this this massive laundry, which is spread over 10 acres in the middle of Bombay. I caught this washerman standing in a tub of water adjacent to his washing pen. It is probably the only laundry in the world where the workers labor in their undershorts. Each “dhobi” stands at his washing stone for up to 16 hours.

Bombay, India’s largest city, is the fourth largest in the world. Its population has nearly doubled since my first visit in 1990. Today, more than 22 million people, many of them migrants from rural areas of India, live and work here. The primary mode of travel within the city is by train. Bombay’s local train system is the oldest railway system in Asia. It now has the most outdated electric rail system in the world, still running on power from overhead wires instead of a third rail or fuel. A commuter train can carry up to 5,000 people during peak hours. The total number of people those trains carry each day is larger than the population of some countries. Some passengers may travel up to five hours every day to get to and from work. This photograph of rush hour crowds packing the staircases leading to the city’s Mahalaxmi Station expresses the very essence of Bombay’s archaic transportation system. The station was built 90 years ago, when electric trains first began to serve the city. At that time, just over one million people lived in Bombay. Today, more than ten times that number live here. This image speaks for itself.

Trust is at the core of Bombay’s amazing lunchbox delivery system. A housewife packs a freshly made lunch in a “Dabba,” a tin or aluminum container. A Dabbawala then picks it up at her house, and after changing hands three, four, or even five times, the lunch arrives on time at a distant office. Each Dabba on this litter is sorted by destination, according to the Dabbawala coding system. Passing from one Dabbawala to another, these lunches will be carried on bikes, heads, hands and arms. They almost always arrive at the right place and at the right time. (A mistake is made on only one out of six million deliveries.) After lunch, the empty Dabbas are picked up by Dabbawalas and delivered back to the homes of their customers that same day.

Since its establishment in 1873, Bombay’s port has been the gateway to India. This image, which I made at sunset as we sailed out of the harbor, creates a metaphor for that very “gateway” by framing a distant Indian sailboat precisely between a pair of giant cranes. I centered the setting sun just above them, using its halo effect to create a huge curve in the sky that echoes the curve of the sun itself. This image offers a final salute to Bombay, spanning my three visits to India’s largest city over the last quarter of a century.

This marketplace is housed in a large hall, filled dozens of stalls selling produce and household goods. There is a balcony circling the entire length and width of the hall, and that is where I spent my time here as a photographer. Using my long telephoto lens, I could zoom in on both vendors and shoppers as they sold and purchased goods. This young man was neither a vendor nor a shopper. He was part of a family enterprise that sold fruits and vegetables here. I caught him as he took a well-deserved break from his work before heading off to school. He is both sitting and lying upon a pile of bundles in the back of the family’s stall. I watched him from the balcony as he tried to find a comfortable position on the makeshift bedding. He rubs his head with one hand as studies the screen of a phone in his other hand. His backpack rests next to him. Although scene is a busy one, it’s colors pull it together as an expressive image. A stained brown tarp covers half of the white bundles. He wears a blue shirt and lies upon a red garment. A crate sits near his head, while vividly colored Indian fabrics are used to make the bundles at the left hand edge of the frame. His brown pants and shiny black shoe seem perfectly at home in this setting. His body language forms a diagonal focal point that ties the entire image together, and making it one of my favorite photographs from this journey.

Most cities in India offer auto-rickshaw service. These tiny vehicles are used to travel short distances, run on compressed natural gas, and provide cheap and efficient transportation. In this image, an auto-rickshaw driver is waiting for a customer. He seems as curious about me as I was about his vehicle.