Friday Wash Day

Everyone has those wash day blues .... the day you have to do your washing and clothes ironing. Well in Mumbai, India this is done on a different scale at the Dhobi Ghat where hundreds of workers toil away washing, drying and ironing clothes sent from all over the city. Miraculously the clothes end up back at their respective owners. These wash pits are used to scrub and pound the clothes before rinsing, drying and finally pressed using charcoal fired heavy irons.

How to Keep Your Jeans Blue

Ever wondered how to keep your jeans blue? This is the trick at the Dhobi Ghat in Mumbai India where a large wooden tub is used to soak the washed jeans in a solution of blue dye and water.

Wash Day Blues

You think you have wash problems? ..... check out the dhobi ghat in Mumbai where thousands of clothes are hand washed every day, dried, ironed and sent back to the customer in an amazing and somewhat disorganised operation that can only be done in India. Most tourists stop at the overhead bridge overlooking the dhobi ghat to take their photographs but of course I wanted to get right in to the middle of the action. So after a "small donation" to a doorman at one of the entrances I got in and captured a wonderful sequence of images throughout the large complex.
More images here.

Dhobi Ghat

A unique feature of Mumbai, the dhobi is a traditional laundryman, who will collect your dirty linen, wash it, and return it neatly pressed to your doorstep. All for a pittance. The "laundries" are called "ghats": row upon row of concrete wash pens, each fitted with its own flogging stone. The clothes are soaked in sudsy water, thrashed on the flogging stones, then tossed into huge vats of boiling starch and hung out to dry. Next they are ironed and piled into neat bundles. The most famous of these Dhobi Ghats is at Saat Rasta near Mahalaxmi Station where almost two hundred dhobis and their families work together in what has always been a hereditary occupation.