In the middle of one of the world’s most densely populated cities, there is a village that has refused to become anything else. In the middle of that village, there is a 200-year-old Portuguese house where a fashion designer lives and works, whose father was a hockey Olympian and whose maternal ancestor was a Portuguese ambassador to India. The ground floor is available for guests. The studio is upstairs. James is usually home.
Mumbai is many cities. There is the city of glass towers and sea-facing apartments, the city of chawls and street food and the perpetual conversation of ten million people moving simultaneously in every direction, the city of film sets and fashion weeks and the industry that makes the images that the rest of India sees itself in. And then, tucked behind the traffic of Girgaon, accessible through a lane that opens without warning into a different century, there is Khotachiwadi — a village in the middle of the city, as astonishing on its hundredth visit as on its first.
Khotachiwadi was built in the 1800s by the Koli fishing community and subsequently settled by the East Indian Catholic community, who built Portuguese-style bungalows along its narrow lanes with the confident aesthetic of people who had no intention of living anywhere else. The village remained largely intact through the twentieth century not because the city forgot it but because its residents refused to leave — and among the most vocal and visible of those residents is James Christopher Joseph Ferreira, who has lived and worked at 47-G, Khotachiwadi, for his entire adult life.
The Man and the House
James Ferreira was born in 1956, into a family whose history is both specific and extraordinary. His father Owen Ferreira was a hockey Olympian — a player of the calibre that India’s golden decades of field hockey produced, a name that carries its own resonance in the story of Indian sport. His maternal ancestor was a Portuguese ambassador to India, a lineage that gives the family’s Portuguese-style house in Khotachiwadi a historical resonance that goes beyond mere heritage classification.
Ferreira attended Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai, the institution that has produced more of India’s significant artists and designers than any other, and began his design career in 1976. The James Ferreira label has since dressed early Bollywood stars, international celebrities including Freida Pinto, and the full spectrum of India’s fashion-conscious clientele through boutiques across the country. He has also been, throughout his career, a fierce and consistent advocate for Khotachiwadi — opposing the various commercial pressures that have threatened to dismantle the village over the decades, and working with the URBZ group to mobilise support for its preservation. The village survives, in significant part, because he would not let it go.
The 200-year-old house at 47-G is one of 28 Grade Two heritage buildings in Khotachiwadi. In 2024, architecture students from KRVIA — the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture — documented it using photogrammetric scanning and oral history interviews, creating digital twins of the house and its artefacts as a contribution to Mumbai’s architectural record. Ferreira himself participated in the oral history sessions, adding layers of personal and social history to the technical documentation.
Staying Here
The ground floor of the house is available for bed and breakfast. The upper floors house Ferreira’s Atelier, his working studio, and No Borders, a vintage boutique — so guests sleep below the rooms where one of India’s most accomplished fashion designers is making clothes.
There are three bedrooms: a simple room furnished with a bed, workstation, AC, and cupboard; a more spacious master bedroom for those wanting greater room; and a third room, one of which has an ensuite bathroom. The interiors are furnished with the antique curios and artefacts that Ferreira has collected over the years — objects that carry the history of the house and the family into every surface. Curtain and lampshades made of beads. The breezy jazz music that plays in the background. The smell of an old house that has been loved and lived in rather than preserved and displayed.
Breakfast is the quintessential East Indian offering — traditional community cuisine, prepared by the family to the recipes that the East Indian Catholic households of Mumbai have kept alive through generations. Eggs and bacon are available. Traditional breakfast and other meals can be provided if booked in advance. James is generous with his list of things to do in Mumbai, curated from the perspective of a man who has spent his entire life in the city and knows it with the depth of genuine attachment.
The family — James, his brother Owen, and sister Marise — run the homestay together. Marise, though frequently based away from the house, is described by guests as exceptionally helpful and generous with her time from afar.
Khotachiwadi
To stay at the Ferreira House is to have Khotachiwadi as your backyard — and Khotachiwadi is, by any measure, one of the most extraordinary places to spend time in Mumbai. The village’s 28 heritage bungalows are painted in the bright colours of the Portuguese coastal tradition: yellow and white, terracotta and blue, the facades decorated with carved wooden balconies and tiled floors visible through open doorways. The lanes are narrow enough that sunlight barely reaches the ground in the afternoons. The neighbours are the families of the East Indian Catholic community who have refused, across generations, to sell to developers.
At Christmas and New Year, Khotachiwadi transforms: every building is decorated with lights, the streets fill with laughter and Christmas carols, and the village becomes the closest approximation available anywhere in Mumbai to a street celebration that belongs to the place rather than to the event. There is no better time to stay at the Ferreira House than the Christmas season.
Five minutes from the house is the Ideal Wafers shop — famous, locally and beyond, for its cheese and tomato wafers, which are exactly as good as their reputation and available in no other form and no other place.
What Girgaon Offers
From Khotachiwadi, the full cultural and historical landscape of central Mumbai opens up on foot or by auto in every direction. Girgaum Chowpatty beach — one of Mumbai’s most vibrant public spaces, the site of the Ganesh Chaturthi immersion and an evening promenade of the city’s most democratic character — is approximately one kilometre away. Chor Bazaar — the famous thieves’ market of antique dealers, furniture restorers, and curio sellers — is under a kilometre. Mohammed Ali Road, with its century-old restaurants and the night-time food culture that makes Mumbai’s Muslim quarter one of the most celebrated eating destinations in India, is 1.7 kilometres.
The Bhuleshwar Temple, the Walkeshwar Temple complex, the Municipal Corporation Heritage Building, and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (Prince of Wales Museum) are all within the radius of a half-day of walking. For those who want to understand Mumbai as a city of layers — historical, architectural, culinary, cultural — the Ferreira House is the best possible address from which to attempt that understanding.
Why It Stays With You
Every great city has its secret places — the addresses that are not on tourist maps, that residents know and visitors discover only through recommendation, that carry more of the city’s essential character than any landmark or organised experience. In Mumbai, one of those addresses is 47-G, Khotachiwadi.
What James Ferreira has opened to guests is not simply a room in an old house. It is access to the story of a family that has inhabited one of Mumbai’s oldest surviving villages for generations, whose personal history is woven into the history of the city — East Indian cuisine and Christmas carols and hockey Olympians and fashion ateliers and the sound of jazz in a house that has been standing since before Mumbai was Mumbai.
Come for the house. Come for the breakfast. Come for the Christmas lights if the season allows it. Come, most of all, to be in Khotachiwadi, which is one of the few places in Mumbai where the city’s appetite for the new has not yet consumed the irreplaceable.
Plan Your Visit
Address: 47-G, Khotachiwadi Trail Lane, Girgaon, Mumbai — 400004 Email: info@jamesferreira.co.in Booking: Airbnb (search Ferreira House Khotachiwadi) · Booking.com (The Ferreiras) · Agoda · Direct email for dates, availability, and rates
Family: James Ferreira (designer, host — lives on site) · Owen Ferreira (co-host, on site) · Marise Ferreira (co-host, available remotely) Designer label: James Ferreira · Boutique: No Borders (first floor) · Atelier: Ferreira’s Atelier (first floor — guests may observe work in progress)
The House: Nearly 200 years old · Grade Two Heritage, Khotachiwadi (one of 28) · Portuguese-style bungalow · Antique furniture and artefacts throughout · Jazz music · Bead curtain and lampshades
Rooms: 3 bedrooms — Simple room (bed, workstation, AC, cupboard) · Master bedroom (more spacious) · Third bedroom. One ensuite bathroom available. Meals: Traditional East Indian breakfast included · Additional meals (including traditional community cuisine) available on advance booking · Eggs and bacon available WiFi: Free · AC: Yes · TV: Flat-screen with satellite
Getting There — Khotachiwadi is in Girgaon, central Mumbai — one of the most accessible neighbourhoods in the city. It is best found on foot from the surrounding streets. — From Charni Road Railway Station (Western Line): approximately 10 minutes on foot. — From Grant Road Railway Station (Western Line): approximately 10 minutes on foot. — From Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport: approximately 20 minutes by taxi or Uber. — Mumbai Metro (Line 3 — Aqua Line): Marine Lines station is approximately 15 minutes on foot. — By auto or taxi: ask for Khotachiwadi, Girgaon — every driver knows it. The lane entrance is on Rajaram Mohan Roy Road (former Charni Road area). Enter the lane and follow to 47-G.
Nearby (all walkable) — Girgaum Chowpatty Beach: 1 km · Ideal Wafers (cheese and tomato wafers): 5 minutes walk · Chor Bazaar: under 1 km · Mohammed Ali Road: 1.7 km · Bhuleshwar Temple: 1.5 km · Crawford Market: 2 km · Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya: 4 km
Best Time to Visit: Christmas and New Year for the full Khotachiwadi experience — the village decorated with lights, Christmas carols in the streets, the East Indian Catholic community’s celebrations at their most visible · October to February for the most pleasant Mumbai weather · Year-round — the house and the village are worth visiting in any season
