Little India

Kali is the goddess here, and the carving inside the shrine is fierce for it. Bengali labourers founded it, and on Tuesday and Friday evenings the courtyard fills until the shoe racks overflow. Photographs are barred only inside the shrine.

There are people picking over goods in it at two in the morning. The store runs 24 hours and its floors join by walkways, so first-timers miss the way out. Gold, spices and electronics sell under one roof. Haggling is not done here.

Eat on the ground floor, buy cloth on the one above. Downstairs a hawker centre backs onto a wet market, so mornings smell of ice melting off fish, while upstairs sari fabric and tailors ring the floor. On the tight stairs, loaded arms get right of way.

A Chinese villa left standing on an Indian street. A sugarcane merchant put it up in 1900, and the primary colours painted on later have made it the most photographed house in the lane.

Henna goes on the back of your hand at a counter towards the rear. Narrow shops of incense, brassware and bangles line a passage two people wide, and when it fills the flow turns one way. Flower garlands are strung outside on the pavement.

Traffic and people share the same width. The pavement is narrow and stacked with goods, so you end up walking in the road, and on Sunday evenings the crowd shuts the footway altogether.

The Thaipusam procession sets out from here. It is a Vishnu temple, and the ten avatars climb the gate tower in tiers. On the day of the walk south Serangoon closes to traffic from before dawn.

A Thai-style Buddhist hall sits wedged between Hindu temples. Small lamps ring the 15m seated Buddha and one lights when you pay for it, while a reclining Buddha stands apart at the back.

The glass front is modelled on a stepwell. The route starts at the top and works down, laying out on paper and in photographs which ships the Indian community arrived on and where they went to work. The cooling is fierce, so bring a layer.

One mural of an old trade waits in each side lane. A cattle drover, a parrot fortune teller and a letter writer are painted up, and since nothing is captioned they are easy to walk past.

A mosque completed in 1910 inside the lane of Dunlop Street. Above the main door a sundial motif sends out twenty-five rays, each lettered in Arabic with the name of one prophet. Its green and gold trim bursts into view where the lane runs out.

A Chinese Buddhist temple of 1917 on Race Course Road honouring Guanyin together with Confucius. Parents bring children before exams to pray at the Confucius altar. Opposite stands the Thai-style Sakya Muni temple of a thousand lights; visit both together.