Bombay burger Vada pav, India Mumbai street food recipe

Vada pav – spiced potato balls in a soft roll – is the quintessential Mumbai street food. BBC presenter Leyla Kazim devours the city’s best

Mumbai was the first stop on an eight-month, round-the-world trip I took with my husband in 2014. The longest time I’d spent out of the UK prior to this had been three weeks. I’d only ever visited three places outside Europe, and it took me a whole year to persuade my other half to join me. And our main objective for these months on the road? To eat.

We hurled ourselves in at the deep end, starting in Mumbai. It is so vast and sprawling that it’s hard not to assume the entire country must lie within this city alone. It was at least 10 times as alive and chaotic and exhausting as I’d dared anticipate. Mumbai offers an unrelenting onslaught on all the senses, particularly hearing: the horn honking does not stop.