Juhu Beach.

Across the harbour the vertical city of the rich

keeps rising — grotesque heads on unsteady shoulders.

The slum city of asbestos squats at its ankles,

huddled behind a smokestack.

- Keki N. Daruwalla, Mandwa

N 19 05 47 E 72 49 34

One of the most prominent beaches in Mumbai (Bombay) is the six kilometer stretch parallel to Juhu Tara Road, connecting the uptown suburbs of Old Khar West and Juhu. A favourite spot of local filmmakers, no doubt providing an inexpensive backdrop complete with dramatic sunsets, it's long been the cheapest and most viable destination for family outings to many of the city's nearly fourteen million inhabitants. A recent drive to clean the beach up has resulted in some four kilometers suitable for romantic strolls, if passage can be found among the crowds pouring in by cars and buses, though the beach still remains unsuitable for swimming or sunbathing.

To actually reach the beach one has to brave the incessantly bleating traffic — a seemingly mad flock of birds of every feather teeming hither and yon — which with some practice does begin to make sense after a while. Drivers don't hang on their horn so much in anger as attempt to alert others of their presence, or simply try to dispense helpful suggestions. Once seated at a café, sipping the domestic franchise espresso which appears to be the sole alternative to the otherwise predominant instant coffee, observing starched, uniformed children being delivered home from school by auto rickshaws, it's even possible to forget about the multitudinous peddlers on the beach, the precarious sidewalk, and the various flocks of beasts of burden and bedraggled street-urchins (estimated at 18 million in India) accompanying one along the way.

However, the most direct threat to the beach's integrity is posed by the nearby Juhu Aerodrome, where plans to extend the runway of what is now a parking plot for the helicopters and jets of the rich and famous would claim part of the seafront, jutting out into the Arabian Sea and cutting the beach in half. So far, the extension plans have been denied permission to proceed by the Indian Government's Ministry of Environment and Forests, but in a polity such as India's it can surely only be a question of time before the right palms have been greased up in the required fashion.

Aviation has been part of the beach's history since 1928, when the Juhu Aerodrome, the closest and oldest of the three airports in the area, first opened. As the flightpath of international travelers takes them across the beach on their way to (or from) the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (known as the Sahar International Airport before Hindu-nationalist fervour overtook the nation), they'll pass over the former main airport of the city, the Santa Cruz Airport (now the main domestic airport), as well as the Juhu strip where the first pilot and two apprentice mechanics of what would one day become Air India were based.

Their original palm-thatched roof hut long since swept away by development, and the desires of the well-heeled and tony, who have flocked to Juhu ever since Jamsetji Tata (1839 - 1904) — the "father of Indian Industry" — bought a plot here back in the 1890s. Perhaps more than any other family, the Tatas have left their indelible mark on Juhu, as it was Jamsetji's first cousin once removed Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (1904 - 1993) who founded Air India's predecessor Tata Airlines in 1932. Increasingly though, Juhu — as well as the Pali Hill neighbourhood in Old Khar along the beach's southern end — has become the preserve of Bollywood stars, industrialists, and assorted "business" wallas seeking refuge from the less affluent inhabitants of the world's second most populous city.

Additional photography by Shauna Wilton.

Plane, trains, & automobiles.

53 18 22 N 113 34 59 W

Edmonton International Airport isn't merely "Canada's largest major airport by area", and one of the country's fastest growing airports, it's also a lot closer to the city of Leduc than Edmonton itself. Even its areal claim is somewhat dubious, given that over half of the 7,600 acres (≈30.7 km²) originally purchased for the airport's development in 1955, have been leased back to the original owners who still cultivate it. Making the EIA the country's largest farm with attached airstrips. Though opened for passenger service in 1960, the original terminal building wasn't completed until three years later, and despite expansion in the late 1990s, further enlargement is underway to accommodate the 9 million passengers predicted to utilise the airport by 2012. Despite being a major port of entry into Canada, the EIA houses barely a dozen works of art — an indication perhaps of how much import the area's Canadians place on art. Among these, a mural by Jack Shadbolt — Bush Pilot in Northern Sky — stands out as the only surviving of four such works commissioned for the original terminal building.

51 29 41 N 0 08 42 W

London's Victoria station, the city's second busiest railway terminus, is in fact four stations in one — two above ground and two underground. More so by chance than design, as it was cobbled together over time in a piecemeal fashion, it's two main overground railway stations remained physically separated until 1924. It began with — what to most passengers would appear as — two distinct stations, the London Brighton & South Coast Railway and the London Chatham & Dover Railway stations, opened in 1860 by a consortium of railway companies (The Victoria Station & Pimlico Railway Co.). The Metropolitan District Railway rapid transit station opened in 1868, and has now become the busiest station in the London Underground system, serving close to 80 million passengers per year. Despite several expansions over the past century, its often overcrowded platforms frequently operate as an exit-only station — a problem which a major upgrade is meant to solve by 2018. Like many of the other eighteen central London railway termini, Victoria station has frequently appeared works of popular culture, for instance in David Lloyd's and Alan Moore's 1980s comic-book series V for Vendetta, and as the place in which the titular protagonist of Oscar Wilde's 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest is discovered.

51 29 45 N 0 08 40 W

London's black Hackney cabs are perhaps the most famous taxis in the world, particularly because of the specially designed vehicles and the extensive training course — The Knowledge — required of fully licensed drivers. However, many of the roughly 21,000 cabs in Greater London now are of practically every colour imaginable (especially when wrapped in advertising livery), as there is in fact no requirement for them to be black. Even the Austin FX4 model and its derivative successors that's dominated the city streets since the late 1950s have begun to be complemented by other models and makes, gradually incorporated into the fleet since 2008. Frequently voted the best taxi service in the world, the classic Hackney cabs (purportedly named for what once was the village of Hackney) have attained iconic status — undoubtedly aided by numerous incorporations into popular culture, lately as a venue for recording music.

51 31 51 N 0 07 31 W

At the time of its opening in 1868 as the Midland Railway's Main Line's southern terminus, the St Pancras station was regarded as a pinnacle of Gothic Revival architecture. Its train shed — now named for its designer, William Barlow — with its characteristic Dent clock ranked as the world's largest single span roof, while its frontage — once the Midland Grand Hotel — earned it the moniker "Cathedral of Railway Stations". None of which saved the station from redundancy by the 1960s and the threat of demolition, the latter successfully opposed by in particular poet John Betjeman. After massive redevelopment — to the tune of some £800 million (≈C$1.3 billion) — it was re-opened as the London St Pancras International Railway Station in 2007. The lower levels of the original hotel (opened in 1873) are currently being refurbished to be operated by 2011 as a five-star hotel (including a brand new wing), while the upper levels are being converted into apartment lofts. The station's surroundings formed the backdrop of Alexander Mackendrick's 1955 black comedy The Ladykillers (far superior to the Coen brother's unnecessary 2004 remake), while the hotel (closed in 1935) was an integral part of Douglas Adams' 1988 novel about gods behaving badly in London, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (rather blatantly ripped off by Marie Phillips in 2007).

50 57 10 N 3 53 06 E

At over 8000 km (≈4971 miles), the European Route 40 (E40) is the longest in the International E-road Network, running from Calais in France to Ridder in Kazakhstan. Though only a small section — some 49 km (≈30.4 miles) — connects Bruxelles with Gent, the amount of time it takes to travel can vary widely. Depending on the amount of traffic, weather conditions, and whether any of its six lanes is undergoing the seemingly perpetual maintenance, a trip by car between the two cities can take anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours. The assigned maximum speed limit on this stretch is set at 120 km/h (≈65 miles/h), but local drivers frequently indulge much higher speeds, not only compromising safety but directly contributing to congestion as well. Although given the importance this short stretch of road plays in the network as a whole, it's not difficult to believe the local claim that the reason for frequent congestion is the fact that in order to arrive anywhere in Europe one has to drive through Belgium.