Why it looks like this

On 16 April 1853, a train of fourteen carriages made the 34-kilometre run from Bombay to Thane: the first passenger railway journey in Asia. Thane has been a rail city ever since — its station is among India's busiest, and the suburban lines are the axes along which the city grew.

Its older identity survives in water: Thane is called the city of lakes for the dozens of tanks — Masunda Talao and others — scattered through its neighbourhoods, with a creek full of flamingos on one side and the forested Yeoor hills on the other.