Indians in Manama: the 2026 guide to Gudaibiya, Hoora, Adliya, Juffair, Isa Town, Riffa, Muharraq and the whole island

Bahrain's resident population was 1,594,654 at the end of December 2024 in the Information & eGovernment Authority's (IGA) open data, as the Gulf Labour Markets and Migration programme republishes it: 742,234 Bahrainis and 852,420 non-Bahrainis, with nationality set by the passport a person entered on. The last full count, the 2020 census, found 1,501,635 residents and was built "solely on the basis of administrative records". Its Capital Governorate, which holds Manama and neighbouring towns including Isa Town, had 548,345 residents, 330,946 of them from "non-Arab Asian countries", the census group that contains India and does not separate it in the table we could open. So no Manama-only count of Indians exists, and none is printed here. The official count is India's own: about 320,000 Indians live in Bahrain, 320,226 in the Ministry of External Affairs' estimate for January 2026, made up of 315,427 Indian citizens and 4,799 people of Indian origin. That is a national figure, not one for Manama alone. The Embassy's community page, which is undated, says about 350,000 Indian nationals and that Indians are 30% of the population; against the IGA's December 2024 total the ministry's figure is about a fifth, with the two dates about a year apart, so this page uses the ministry's dated number.

2026 has not been an ordinary year in Manama. From 28 February Iranian drones and missiles were fired at Bahrain, where the US Navy's Fifth Fleet has its headquarters in Juffair; the Interior Ministry reported residential buildings in and around Manama damaged, schools and universities moved to remote learning, and on 8 March the Bahrain Defence Force said its air defences had destroyed 95 missiles and 164 drones. Bahrain's airspace was closed in March, Gulf Air restarted flights on 9 April after a US–Iranian ceasefire, and the Defence Force reported fresh interceptions on 9 July. The safety section has the dated facts and what the authorities asked residents to do, and says plainly that we found no report that settles the position in late October.

There are no Bahrain topic guides on this site, so this page carries the work and residence rules itself, read from the Labour Market Regulatory Authority's own pages: see work and employers. The country-level page is Bahrain, and what is live for the city is on the Manama events page, the Manama groups and the Diwali page for Manama. This page is about the city.

The Embassy of India dates Indian settlement in modern Bahrain to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when merchant families from Sindh and the Kathiawad region of Gujarat established themselves, most of them in small retail; by about 1925 nearly 2,500 Indian families had settled. The discovery of oil in 1932 brought Indians in as managers, salesmen and workers, and under the British protectorate the Indian rupee was legal tender: the Embassy says Bahrainis still call 100 fils "one rupee". India's Embassy opened in January 1973. The community's institutions are old: the temple in the souq was built in 1817, the Indian Club dates from 1915, the Bahrain Keraleeya Samajam from 1947 and The Indian School from 1950.

The numbers we have

The Embassy's figures are rounder and older than the ministry's, and they disagree with it: 350,000 against 320,226. The ministry's table is the one with a date, so the guide uses it; the Embassy's breakdown by state is the only one we found, and its undated wording is quoted as the Embassy's. The Embassy says Indians are the largest expatriate community, ahead of Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Filipinos, Indonesians and Arabs of various nationalities. The tourism authority says Arabic is the official language, English is widely spoken and signs are bilingual, with Hindi and Urdu among the other languages heard; Wikipedia's list of the community's languages runs from Malayalam, Hindi and Gujarati to Marathi, Telugu, Kannada, Punjabi and Tamil.

Where Indians actually live

No official source says which nationality lives in which district, so what follows is what the sources do say about each place. - Manama Souq and "Little India" — the Embassy says a "little India in Bahrain" project was launched in December 2015 over 5,000 square metres in the heart of the souq, where the "200 year old" temple stands, with regular markets, fashion shows and cultural performances. The Shrinathji Temple is within walking distance of Bab Al Bahrain, the tourism authority says. - Gudaibiya — an older, busy district of Manama with embassies and the National Assembly; Wikipedia describes it as cosmopolitan and names large Indian, Filipino, Ethiopian and Pakistani populations. Lulu Retail's news pages record its tenth Bahrain hypermarket there, opened in September 2023. - Hoora — an older district of hotels, restaurants and the Beit Al Quran museum, visited at weekends by Saudis; a Sept 2026 market note names it among the cheapest places for one-bedroom flats. - Adliya and Segaya — Adliya is the restaurant district, and Segaya (spelled Sugayya on the Samajam's own address) holds the Bahrain Keraleeya Samajam at Building 32, Block 328, Road 2801; the Indian Club is on Zubara Avenue, Area 308. - Juffair — a district south of the centre that grew from a village, with the US Naval Support Activity, the Al Fateh Grand Mosque and many high-rise flats; it is where Property Finder's rent listings cluster. - Seef and Sanabis — the Embassy of India is in Al-Seef, the Embassy's application centre is in Bahrain Mall, Sanabis, the LMRA's main office is in Sanabis, and Dana Mall is in Sanabis. - Isa Town — a planned town about 8 km south-west of Manama, begun in 1963, with its first residents from December 1967; The Indian School's main campus (P.O. Box 558) and The New Indian School are there. - Riffa — a large town in the Southern Governorate with the second campus of The Indian School, a Lulu Hypermarket, Riffa Market and the Al Rayan Medical Complex. - Muharraq — across the water, joined to Manama by causeways including the Shaikh Isa Causeway, with the airport and an LMRA counter at Seef Mall Muharraq; the Amwaj Islands, off its coast, appear in the rent listings.

The rule of thumb: the souq, Gudaibiya and Hoora are the older, closer-in districts where the shops, the temple and the cheaper flats are; Juffair, Seef and the towers of the waterfront are where the furnished, services-included flats are advertised; Isa Town and Riffa are where families go for the schools. Where you work and where the children's school is decide more than the district's reputation.

Bahrain is one small country with one set of rules: the Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) issues work permits, the Ministry of Interior's Nationality, Passport and Residence Affairs (NPRA) handles residence, and unlike the UAE's seven emirates the address on your lease changes your commute and your rent, not your paperwork. This is the Manama version, in the order that works.

1. Check the permit before you fly. The employer applies on the LMRA's Expat Management System and is invoiced for the permit, the annual health care fee and the monthly fee; nothing on the LMRA's pages asks the worker to pay them, so a demand for "visa money" is a warning sign. The 2022 reforms ended the conversion of visit visas into work permits (work and employers), so a visit visa is not a way in.
2. Two medicals. The LMRA requires a medical at an approved Wafid centre in the country of origin, and a second one in Bahrain at a centre the employer chose; the Ministry of Health generates that appointment automatically and the employer is told by SMS and e-mail.
3. Biometrics at the LMRA. A worker arriving from abroad goes to the LMRA office at Bahrain International Airport for photo, signature and fingerprints; a worker already in Bahrain books at an LMRA branch — the main office in Sanabis, the Expat Protection Centre in Northern Sehla or Seef Mall Muharraq, all open Sunday to Thursday, 7:30am to 3:30pm. The LMRA's process says expatriate employees are given SIM cards at this step, so ask your HR officer.
4. The residence permit and the CPR. The residence permit is printed by the employer through the national portal once you arrive. The CPR (the resident ID number) is what schools, clinics and banks ask for: The Indian School's admission list asks for a CPR copy.
5. A SIM and a bank account. Batelco, STC and Zain are the operators, and you need your passport to register. Wages are paid through the LMRA's Wage Protection System 2.0, so you need a bank account or payment-service account that HR can pay into; the LMRA publishes a guide on activating the IBAN.
6. A bus card. The GO Card costs 500 fils at the airport or any bus terminal and can hold up to BD 50 (getting around).
7. Read the lease. Ask whether the quoted rent includes electricity and water, internet and the municipality charge, and get the deposit and the notice period in writing (neighbourhoods and renting).
8. Health cover for the family. The LMRA wants a valid health insurance certificate for each dependant, covering the whole of the permit; ask HR in writing who pays (health).
9. Save the numbers. Emergencies are 999; the Embassy's consular helpline is +973 1756 0360 and its 24-hour emergency line +973 3941 8071 (the last section).
10. Start the family papers early. A spouse's permit needs the marriage certificate in Arabic or English, and for Indian passports the LMRA says the spouse's name must be written in the passport; a child's needs a birth certificate attested by the employee's embassy in Bahrain and by Bahrain's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (bringing your family).
11. Beware the spoofed call. The Embassy warned on 21 April 2026 of callers who spoof Ministry of External Affairs numbers, threaten deportation and ask for card details or money; it says its officials do not phone for personal information and ask for documents only by e-mail from an mea.gov.in address.

Bahrain publishes no official rent schedule that we could find, so the sources for rents are asking prices. We read the first page of Property Finder's apartments-for-rent listings on 23 October 2026, 27 flats, 25 of them listed in the previous three days, and a market note on a property-marketing site that was updated on 21 September 2026. Both are asking rents from listings, not signed leases, and the default order on that page favours the furnished towers of Juffair and Seef, so older flats in the souq, Gudaibiya and Hoora are under-represented. Most listings carry an "Inclusive" tag beside the price, which on that site refers to bills such as electricity and water (one reads "EWA inclusive with cap"); check what each one includes.

The market note's averages for asking rents across Bahrain are BD 300 for a studio (range BD 180–450), BD 380 for a one-bedroom (BD 250–650) and BD 520 for a two-bedroom (BD 330–900), with furnished flats BD 40–120 above unfurnished ones. It prices electricity and water at BD 40–120 a month, internet at BD 10–25 and building service charges at BD 40–100. It also says expatriate tenants pay a municipality charge of 10% of the rent, which it contradicts a few lines later by saying Bahrain has no normal annual residential property tax; treat that as a question for the landlord and the lease. Juffair's asking rents in the table sit below those averages at every size; the note also names Bahrain Bay, Reef Island and Marassi as the dearest districts, with two-bedroom flats often at BD 700–900.

How renting works here

The same note lists the Survey and Land Registration Bureau's rent law, the Real Estate Regulatory Authority's rules and its Aqari platform among its sources; ask the landlord how the tenancy is registered, and keep the registration. Pay by transfer or cheque against a signed contract, never in cash, and be wary of anyone who wants money before you have stood in the flat and seen the owner's papers. Ask who pays the electricity and water bill and whether the quoted rent is "inclusive" of internet; and see whether the building lets to single occupants or to families only before you pay a deposit.

Sharing, camps and employer housing

The Embassy says more than 65% of the Indian workforce is in construction, contracting and maintenance, where sharing a flat or employer housing is usual. The Embassy publishes a specimen employment contract on its website; if housing is promised, compare your contract with it and have the housing clause in writing. We found no 2026 source for rents of shared rooms in Gudaibiya or Hoora, and do not print one.

A note on Juffair

Defense One reported on 2 March that Juffair "was completely evacuated Saturday" (28 February), the day the Navy's headquarters there was targeted, and that the military told troops and civilian staff living in Juffair they could be reimbursed for staying elsewhere; the article does not say what happened to other residents. If you are signing a lease in Juffair, ask the landlord what the arrangements were for tenants during the war and what the contract says about early exit.

Bahrain has no metro, and the island is small enough that cars, taxis and buses cover it. The Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications describes the public bus network, run by the Bahrain Public Transport Company, as 26 routes, over 600 stops and 140 air-conditioned buses connecting Manama, Muharraq, Isa Town, Riffa, Budaiya, Saar and Bahrain International Airport; the tourism authority says main routes run every 10 to 20 minutes. The Ministry's fare page, last updated on 6 October 2025, gives the fares:

The GO Card itself costs 500 fils and can be topped up to BD 50 (tourism authority); you check in on the machine when you board. The Ministry's page publishes timetables and a journey planner through the Bahrain Bus website and app, so check the route for your own trip.

Taxis and ride-hailing

Taxi fares are set by the government and metered. The Ministry's tariff page, updated on 17 September 2026, gives a starting fare of BD 1.000 from 6am to 10pm on Sunday to Thursday, and BD 1.250 from 10pm to 6am and all day on Fridays, Saturdays and public holidays; distance is charged at 200 fils after the first kilometre in the first half of a journey and 250 fils in the second half, as the tariff words it; a trip from the airport adds BD 2.000 and one from a hotel BD 1.000; and journeys over 25 km on a weekend add BD 2.000. The tourism authority says international ride-hailing apps such as Uber also operate.

The airport and flights to India

Bahrain International Airport is on Muharraq island. Gulf Air, which operated a limited network from Dammam in March 2026, ran its first scheduled flight from Bahrain on 9 April, after the US–Iranian ceasefire allowed airspace to reopen (ch-aviation, 10 April). We did not find a current timetable of Bahrain–India flights on a page we could open, so check your airline before you book, and keep your passport's validity in order (the last section explains where to renew).

The King Fahd Causeway to Saudi Arabia

The causeway links Bahrain with the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The Ministry's taxi tariff notes a causeway toll of BD 3.500 that a taxi passenger must pay, which is the figure we can source. We found no current source on visa and entry rules for Indian passport holders crossing by road, or on closures during the 2026 attacks, so check the Saudi visa rules for your own passport and the causeway's status before you drive to Khobar.

Driving

To drive as a visitor you need your home licence and an international driving permit, and licence holders from the other GCC states can drive without one, the tourism authority says. We could not open the traffic directorate's page on converting a foreign licence, so ask your employer's PRO what your nationality and job title need before you pay a driving school.

A residence permit in Bahrain comes with a job. The Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) issues the work permit, the employer applies for it on the LMRA's Expat Management System, and the Nationality, Passport and Residence Affairs (NPRA) issues the residence that follows. There is no Bahrain topic guide on this site, so this section is the whole of what a new arrival needs, read from the LMRA's own service pages (last updated between October 2025 and September 2026), the Social Insurance Organisation's regulation and the Ministry of Interior's Golden Residency release.

Where the work is

The Embassy says more than 65% of the Indian workforce is in construction, contracting and maintenance, with a sizeable number of doctors, engineers, chartered accountants, bankers and managers, and 12,000–15,000 housemaids, who hold a separate domestic permit. The Embassy's list of Indian banks and public-sector undertakings, which is undated, names State Bank of India (wholesale at the Bahrain Financial Harbour and retail in Manama), ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, LIC International and New India Assurance. For workers recruited from India under an ECR passport, India's eMigrate system sets minimum referral wages; the Embassy's notice says the pre-2020 levels were restored from 15 July 2021, and the current table is at emigrate.gov.in. Women in distress can reach the Embassy's 24-hour line on +973 3840 0433.

The permit, and who pays

The LMRA's fee page invoices the employer, not the worker. Edict 79 of 2025, announced on 29 December 2025 and in force from 1 January 2026 for new permits and renewals (domestic employees excluded), phases in higher charges, as EY's tax news summarises it:

A late monthly fee draws a fine of BD 2 a month, capped at BD 6 a permit, and the LMRA warns that overdue fees can lead to the cancellation of all of an employer's permits. When a worker transfers, the old employer gets a credit for the unused months. The LMRA bills these to the employer, and nothing on its pages puts them on the worker; the Embassy publishes a specimen employment contract and a pre-departure advisory on its website for recruits to compare their offers with.

Changing employer

The LMRA's transfer service lets a worker move without cancelling the permit, if it has at least five days left. The current employer is notified through the system. If the worker has served less than 12 months, the employer can approve at once, approve after a notice period (30 days, or the contract's, up to 90 days), or refuse; if it does nothing for seven days the application is cancelled. After 12 months the employer can approve at once or after the notice, and if it does nothing for seven days the transfer is approved after 30 days. The new employer must pay the permit fee within 30 days of approval. A transfer is refused for a felony or an honour-or-honesty crime, a breach of permit terms, a new employer without Bahrainisation quota, and, in the last three months of a permit, unless the current employer agrees. A worker with an expired permit needs a new permit, not a transfer, and a worker whose transfer is pending must keep working for the current employer until it is approved.

If an employer files a notice that a worker has left work, the worker has 11 working days to file a grievance with evidence, such as a termination letter, a complaint or a police report, through the LMRA's expatriate services system; the LMRA's stated processing time is three working days.

When the permit ends: the flexi permit and the registered worker permit

The flexi permit, introduced in 2017 to let a worker with irregular status sponsor himself, was cancelled by order of the Crown Prince and Prime Minister on 5 October 2022; the LMRA stopped accepting and issuing it, and holders had a three-month grace period to regularise (Fragomen, 31 October 2022; Migrant-Rights, October 2022). The replacement is the Labour Registration Program, introduced on 27 October 2022, run through accredited private registration centres under Decree-Law No. 1 of 2022 and widened in 2023 to cover all irregular workers, not only those who had become irregular before it began (Migrant-Rights, December 2023). Today it is the registered worker permit, and the LMRA's page (updated 16 June 2026) sets the conditions: you must be in Bahrain with a terminated work permit; you must have no criminal record or absconding offence and not be in breach of your contract; visit-visa holders are not eligible; you must not appear on any commercial registration; and you must pay all the fees.

The page's printed totals are BD 267.5, BD 365 and BD 560, each BD 5 below the sum of its lines, the amount of the admin fee that the page says is paid when the application is lodged. A late monthly fee draws a fine of BD 5 a month up to BD 15, and unpaid monthly fees lead to cancellation. The LMRA's processing time is two working days, plus up to seven for the Ministry of Interior and the IGA. This is a route for people already in Bahrain, not a way to recruit from India, and the worker pays the permit's charges directly and must not appear on a commercial registration.

The Golden Residency

The NPRA's Golden Residency was eased on 26 November 2025, when the Ministry of Interior announced that the minimum property investment had been cut from BD 200,000 to BD 130,000 (about US$345,000). The release lists five routes: owning property above that threshold; employees who have worked in Bahrain for at least five years at an average monthly salary above BD 2,000; retirees with at least 15 years' work in Bahrain and an average pension of at least BD 2,000; non-resident retirees with a pension above BD 4,000; and talented individuals. It describes long-term residency, easier business set-up, multiple-entry privileges and the ability to sponsor family. The LMRA says to apply through the NPRA, and that a holder can then use the LMRA's services for a work permit. We could not open the NPRA's own criteria page, so check the thresholds there.

Bringing your family

The LMRA's pages (updated 10 September 2026) set one threshold: the expatriate employee's monthly net income, as registered with the Social Insurance Organisation (SIO), must be at least BD 400 to sponsor a spouse or children up to the age of 24. The fee is a BD 90 service fee and a BD 5 admin fee per dependant, and the LMRA's processing time is three working days plus up to seven for the NPRA and the IGA. The documents are the dependant's passport (valid for at least six months, and the LMRA recommends two years), a valid health insurance certificate for the dependant covering the whole of the worker's permit, and, for a spouse, the marriage certificate in Arabic or English; for Indian and Pakistani passports the LMRA says the spouse's name must be written in the passport, and the attestation rule applies to Arab nationalities and to others whose passports do not name the spouse. A child's birth certificate must be attested by the employee's embassy in Bahrain and by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dependants over 24 are handled by the NPRA under its own conditions, which we could not open. Reports of a proposal in Parliament to raise the threshold to BD 1,000 exist, but the LMRA still lists BD 400, and that is the figure used here.

A spouse on a family permit cannot work without a work permit. The LMRA's "work approval for dependants" lets a spouse work while keeping the family permit: one year costs a BD 195 service fee and two years BD 390, plus BD 5, and doctors, teachers, engineers, insurance and banking staff need approval from their regulator first.

End of service

Under Prime Minister's Decision No. 109 of 2023, in force from 1 March 2024, the employer alone pays the Social Insurance Organisation 4.2% of the worker's wage for the first three years of employment and 8.4% after that; nothing is deducted from the worker. At the end of service the award is half a month's wage for each of the first three years and a month's wage for each later year, in proportion for part years, based on the last wage and not above the contributions paid. GCC nationals are outside the regulation, and the SIO's guide says the monthly calculation counts only basic salary and the social allowance, so the split of your pay between basic and allowances matters when you read the offer. Service before 1 March 2024 stays under the Labour Law (Law No. 36 of 2012), and the regulation's article 13 deals with people who had more than three years' service before the change; we could not read the rest of it, so ask HR in writing how your earlier years are treated.

Tax, pay and the working week

There is no personal income tax in Bahrain (PwC's tax summary, reviewed 26 July 2026) and the standard rate of VAT is 10%, which applies to purchases, not salaries. Wages are paid through the LMRA's Wage Protection System 2.0, which records each payment. The weekend is Friday and Saturday, and the LMRA and the Embassy work Sunday to Thursday. Outdoor work in direct sun is banned from noon to 4pm every summer; the 2026 ban, under Decision No. 5 of 2026, ran from 15 June to 31 August, and the Labour Ministry's rules require a posted daily schedule at each site.

Where to complain

The LMRA's call centre is +973 1750 6055 (phone service 7:30am to 5pm), and its Expat Protection Centre in Northern Sehla is open Sunday to Thursday, 7:30am to 3:30pm. The Embassy's community-welfare and labour desk is +973 1718 0529 ([email protected]), and its 24-hour emergency line is +973 3941 8071. A worker whose employer has filed a notice of absence, withheld the passport or stopped paying should call before signing anything.

Bahrain's biggest lines are rent and, for a family, school fees and health cover; the biggest saving is that there is no income tax. We could not read a crowd-sourced price table: Numbeo refused the Manama page on 23 October because its monthly page limit had been reached, so the table below uses only lines priced by an official page or a dated listing. A Bahraini dinar is 1,000 fils.

What moves the budget

For most households rent is the largest line, and where you sit in the range depends on whether electricity, water and internet are in it: the market note's ranges are wide (BD 250–650 for a one-bedroom). School fees come next for a family: The Indian School's total monthly fee runs from BD 24.8 to BD 51.7 before transport, and the schools section sets out the table. Health cover for dependants, which the LMRA requires on each application, comes third, and we found no 2026 premium table, so ask HR in writing. Flights home are the fourth; Gulf Air's network was cut back in March and restarted in April, so compare current fares rather than last year's.

Where the Indian saving is

Groceries and eating out are not the story; the story is tax. With no income tax, a household that keeps rent and fees under control keeps its gross, and end-of-service pay builds up on the employer's account at the Social Insurance Organisation (work and employers). The LMRA names Lulu Exchange Co and the Bahrain Financial Company among its cash payment points, and The Indian School takes fee payments through Lulu Money and Lulu Exchange branches without charges. Compare each exchange house's rate and charge on the day you send money. How India's rules treat NRE and NRO accounts and a long stay abroad are outside this page, so ask your bank before you move savings.

Health care in Bahrain runs on two tracks, the government's hospitals and health centres, with fees for non-Bahrainis, and private hospitals and clinics that insurance policies point to. Wikipedia's account of the system names the Salmaniya Medical Complex in Manama, which opened in 1957 as the first public tertiary hospital; the American Mission Hospital, which began as a dispensary in 1893 and opened formally in 1903; the Bahrain Defence Force's Royal Medical Services hospital, which grew into a 120-bed hospital in 1979; and the private Bahrain Specialist Hospital. Government care is subsidised for non-Bahrainis rather than free, and the page does not give a fee table.

The permit's health care fee, and insurance for dependants

Each work permit carries an annual health care fee, which the employer pays: BD 90 for a 12-month permit in 2026, BD 45 for six months and BD 180 for 24 months, rising to BD 144 for 12 months by 2029 (EY's summary of Edict 79 of 2025). The LMRA's refund rules call it the primary health care fee and credit the unused months back to the employer if the worker transfers or leaves, which tells you it is attached to the permit, not to an insurance policy. A worker on a registered worker permit pays the equivalent line, BD 90 for a year, as "health insurance" in the LMRA's table.

For dependants the position is different: the LMRA requires, on its spouse, children and transfer pages, a valid health insurance certificate for each dependant covering the full duration of the worker's residence permit, so a family needs a policy from a licensed insurer before the dependants' permits are issued. The law behind this is Health Insurance Law No. 23 of 2018, which Wikipedia describes as making cover mandatory for residents and visitors and putting the cost of foreign employees' cover, and in some cases their dependants', on employers. The national scheme, branded Sehati, has been phased in, and we found no official 2026 page that sets out a standard resident package, its premium or how it is enforced. The practical rule is the one for any Gulf posting: ask HR in writing exactly who pays for your spouse and children, at which hospitals, with what cap and with what exclusions, and keep the policy certificate, because the LMRA asks for it on a dependant's application and on a transfer.

What to carry and what to know

• Emergencies: the tourism authority's list gives 999 for the police, ambulance and civil defence, 199 for a traffic accident, 994 for the coastguard and 8000 7000 for health online appointments, with 1751 5555 for an electricity and water emergency.
• Medicines: the Embassy publishes a list of medicines prohibited in Bahrain (a scanned PDF on its website), so check it, and carry prescriptions and a doctor's letter for any medicine you bring from India.
• The work medical: one medical in the country of origin and one in Bahrain are part of the permit process (first two weeks); the Ministry of Health also requires the employer to arrange periodical medical examinations for expatriate employees, according to the LMRA's page.
• Family and child protection: the tourism authority lists 1743 0515 for family protection; the Embassy has its own 24-hour line for Indian women in need.

Help from the community

The Embassy's welfare desk is the first call for a worker who cannot afford treatment. Its fee table includes BD 0.800 for the Indian Community Welfare Fund in every passport and consular fee, so ask the desk what the fund can pay for. The Indian Club ran a 24-hour help desk during the pandemic, Bahrain This Month's profile of the club says, and the Indian Community Relief Fund, which the magazine's guide to clubs describes as a non-government, non-profit organisation, is another body to know. Ask in the groups which clinics near Gudaibiya, Juffair or Isa Town take your insurer.

For an Indian family in Bahrain the school fee is a large line in the budget and often decides the district. The Embassy counts eight Indian schools affiliated to the CBSE and says The Indian School, established in 1950, is the biggest community school in the Gulf. The Embassy's list gives names, principals, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, but not street addresses or fees, so each school's own site is the place to check: The Indian School; The Asian School; The Ibn Al-Hytham Islamic School; The New Indian School; Al Noor International School; The New Millennium School; Bahrain Indian School (the Bhavan's school); and The New Horizon School.

The Indian School: campuses and numbers

The Indian School, on its own site, has an Isa Town campus (P.O. Box 558, telephone 1768 4166) and a Riffa campus (telephone 7737 7000), runs from LKG to Class XII and says it was founded in 1950 through the efforts of the Indian community. Its history page gives over 11,250 pupils and a staff of 600, and its footer says around 12,000. Its news page lists a "Good" rating in a BQA review (the Education and Training Quality Authority's inspection), without a date, and an annual youth festival, Tarang.

What the fees look like

The school's own fee table, undated but on its 2026 site, gives a monthly tuition and total, with transport at BD 15 a month extra:

The totals add a development fee, a C.E.P. fee from Class I, an infrastructure fee and a smart classroom fee to tuition. On admission there is a one-time BD 217 (LKG to Class I) to BD 367 (Class IX onwards) for the first child, which includes a BD 100 refundable deposit and a BD 100 building levy, plus a BD 50–150 migration fee for pupils moving from other Bahrain schools, and an annual fee of BD 20 (BD 30 for classes with a laboratory). A second child's one-time total is lower, BD 67 to BD 217, because the deposit and levy fall to BD 25 each. The table shows a 10% VAT line on the membership fee.

Getting a seat

The admission procedure runs online registration, an admission test and an interview with the principal or vice principal, and the school says it takes two to four hours. LKG is a 20-minute interview; UKG has a 45-minute test; Class I a one-hour test of English and mathematics; Classes II–III add Hindi or Arabic; Classes IV–IX have a two-hour test with a result after two working days; Class XI is decided on the Class X model examination grades. The documents are the child's passport pages and residence permit page, the CPR and immunisation record; from Class II the original transfer certificate, attested by the Ministry of External Affairs of the country where the child last studied and by Bahrain's Ministry of Foreign Affairs unless an apostille is stamped, plus the latest mark sheet. A sibling or staff child applies in a separate category with the family's membership card. The school's 2026–27 admission syllabus for LKG to Class III is on its website, and mid-session applicants are tested on the portions taught so far.

Other schools, nurseries and universities

The seven other CBSE schools set their own fees and admissions, and we did not find their 2026–27 fee tables on pages we could open, so ask each for its table before you pick a district. We also found no source for nursery fees or for the universities' Indian-student numbers, and do not print any. The Embassy's education pages cover CBSE schools, Study in India and scholarships.

Indian cooking is easy to keep up in Manama. The Indian-owned Lulu Hypermarket has stores across the island; Lulu Retail's news pages record openings at Juffair, in Gudaibiya (its tenth Bahrain hypermarket, September 2023), in central Manama near the Sacred Heart Church (the eleventh, November 2023), at Zinj, Hidd, Saar and Muharraq Central, and Wikipedia lists one in Riffa. We could not open Lulu's store locator, so confirm the branch before crossing the island. The Embassy's third "India in Bahrain Festival" was held with Lulu Hypermarket and Dana Mall at Dana Mall in Sanabis on 6 February 2026. Manama Souq, where the Embassy places its "Little India" project, is the older shopping area around the temple.

Restaurants by area

Bahrain Confidential's August 2025 list of Indian restaurants, with one Bahrain This Month venue listing for Adliya, is the most recent we could open; confirm opening hours before a long trip, since it is more than a year old:

In that list the Kerala and South Indian restaurants are in Manama, the street-food and fine-dining ones in Adliya, the hotel and modern ones in Seef, and the vegetarian chains in the malls. We found no 2026 source that compares which supermarket stocks which Indian brands, regional pulses or fresh curry leaves; the groups answer that in a minute.

Prices

We found no 2026 survey of grocery or restaurant prices on a page we could open, and Numbeo refused its Manama pages on 23 October, so no basket is printed. The businesses below are the ones near the centre of the city on Namaste Community's directory; the Bahrain directory has the rest, and you can add your grocer or tailor if it is missing.

Manama has a Hindu temple in the souq. The Embassy lists a "200 year old Hindu Temple", five churches and three gurudwaras among the places of worship of its Indian community, says Bahrain gives the community wide freedom for social and religious activities, and says the Bahraini side has made a cremation facility available to Hindus, the first cremation ground having been given almost a century ago. The table is what we could confirm on a page, and timetables change, so telephone before you go.

The Shrinathji Temple and its redevelopment

The temple stands in the part of Manama Souq where, the Embassy says, a "little India in Bahrain" project covering 5,000 square metres was launched in December 2015. On 25 August 2019 India's prime minister launched a US$4.2 million redevelopment project for the temple, the Tribune reported from Manama: 16,500 square feet of land, and a four-floor building of 45,000 square feet and 30 metres in height, with work to start later that year. The tourism authority's page dates the announcement to 2020, but the 2019 date is the one in the contemporary report. We found no report that the new building has opened, so the souq temple remains the place to go, and its programme is announced locally.

Other faiths of the community

The Bahrain Zoroastrian Association represents Parsis, and Bahrain This Month's guide to clubs lists the Bhatia Mitra Mandal and the Shri Gujarati Samaj; we found no source on a Jain temple in Manama, so ask the groups where the Paryushan and pathshala gatherings are held. The Al Fateh Grand Mosque in Juffair is the largest mosque in the country, Wikipedia says, and the tourism authority calls the Shrinathji Temple a symbol of religious tolerance in Bahrain.

Weddings, births and funerals

The Embassy's application centre lists marriage registration (BD 18.800 in the Embassy's fee table), birth registration (BD 8.000) and a fresh passport for a newborn. A Hindu cremation is possible in Bahrain, the Embassy says. For the death of an Indian national, the Embassy's page "Documents for Death Certificate" sets out what the family needs, and its nodal desk for death compensation is on +973 1718 0529 ([email protected]).

Visiting

Dress modestly, covering shoulders and knees; shoes come off at the door of the temple and heads are covered in the gurdwara. Telephone before a visit at Diwali or Janmashtami, when the lanes of the souq are crowded.

Indian Bahrain is organised through its clubs and associations. The Embassy counts 30 registered Indian socio-cultural associations and clubs and says an equal number are unregistered, and it supports state associations through the State Facilitation Fund; it adds that a number of institutes teaching the performing arts let children of the community keep their ties to India. Nobody has to join any of them, but they run the community's sport, its festivals and much of its welfare.

The Indian Club

The Indian Club says on its own website that it was founded in 1915 and has a membership "well in excess of 1,000"; Bahrain This Month's 2021 profile says it marked its centenary in 2015, has about 900 members and is open to Indian nationals over 18 living in Bahrain, and Wikipedia says over 4,000, so the figures disagree. Its address is Zubara Avenue, Area 308, Manama (telephone +973 1725 3157). The website lists tennis and badminton courts and the Deuce Sports Lounge; the 2021 profile adds a gym, library, snooker room, a banquet hall and a family room, a Toastmasters club that meets there, and a calendar of May Queen, Onam and talent festivals, one of which drew over 2,300 participants. During the pandemic, with the Capital Governorate and the Embassy, it helped repatriate over 3,000 stranded Indians on more than 20 chartered flights and ran a 24-hour help desk.

The Bahrain Keraleeya Samajam

The Bahrain Keraleeya Samajam (BKS), which Bahrain This Month dates to 1947, is at Building 32, Block 328, Road 2801, Segaya, Manama (telephone +973 1725 1878). Its website lists an entertainment wing, a literary wing, a children's wing, a ladies' wing, a library, indoor games, a photography club, a Toastmasters club, a Malayalam padasala (language school), a badminton coaching camp and a book fest. In 2025 its Onam celebrations ran for about six weeks and closed with a Navratri celebration, and it held a second open junior and senior badminton tournament in October. The Embassy held its 12th International Day of Yoga event at the Samajam on 21 June 2026.

Regional and community associations

Bahrain This Month's guide to clubs, which carries no date, lists the associations below with founding years where it gives them; there are many more, and the groups are where the current ones surface. - Indian Ladies Association — founded in the late 1950s. - Shri Gujarati Samaj — formed in 1980. - Bongiyo Samaj — started in 1999 to promote Indian culture and tradition among expatriates. - Indian Medical Association, Bahrain chapter — set up in 2010. - Punjabis United in Bahrain — started in January 2015. - Maharashtra Cultural Society — Maharashtrians have been rooted in Bahrain since the 1940s, the magazine says. - Bhatia Mitra Mandal, the Bhatias being one of the oldest Indian communities in Bahrain, and the Bahrain Zoroastrian Association. - Indian Community Relief Fund (ICRF), a non-government, non-profit organisation, and the Bahrain India Society (BIS), which the guide places among the business-focused bodies.

Embassy events and classes

The Embassy runs a calendar of its own: the Republic Day reception on 26 January 2026, the third India in Bahrain Festival at Dana Mall on 6 February 2026, a Viksit Bharat Run organised with India's Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, a Hindi Diwas programme and the Independence Day flag-hoisting on 15 August 2026. Classes are run by the clubs and by private teachers. We could not confirm a current list of dance, music or language studios or a cricket league on any page, so ask parents which ones their children stayed with and check a studio's licence before paying a term in advance.

Manama keeps Indian festivals on its own terms. There is a temple in the souq, but Diwali is not a public holiday in Bahrain, the weekend is Friday and Saturday, and the calendar is the temple's, the clubs' and the Embassy's. What follows is what could be confirmed by 23 October 2026; the live listings below carry what is added later. The Embassy's list of its own 2026 holidays is useful as a date list: it includes Dussehra on 20 October, Diwali on 8 November and Guru Nanak's birthday on 24 November, with Bahrain's National Day on 16 December.

Diwali in Manama

Diwali is not a public holiday in Bahrain, and Sunday 8 November is a working day, since the weekend is Friday and Saturday, although the Embassy lists the day among its own holidays. Family gatherings therefore fall on Friday 6 November, Dhanteras, and Saturday 7 November, with the Lakshmi puja at home on Sunday evening after work. The Diwali page for Manama records that Manama's Diwali centres on the Shrinathji Temple, whose surroundings are lit with diyas, candles and lanterns around the festival; that Bahrain Indian School has held Diwali programmes with assemblies, lanterns and diyas, dance and song; and that in 2025 a representative of the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, ministers and the Indian ambassador attended a community reception. The temple's 2026 programme had not been published by 22 October. Fireworks are a controlled item in Bahrain: the Ministry of Interior is the responsible authority and lighting them without a permit is punishable, so the night is lit with diyas and lamps.

Onam, Navratri and the Samajam

The Samajam is where Bahrain's Malayalis keep Onam; its news page for October 2025 says the Onam programme ran for about six weeks and closed together with a Navratri celebration. Ask for the 2026 programme in the Kerala groups.

Weekends, permits and Ramadan

The Friday–Saturday weekend means Sunday-evening pujas and Friday-evening gatherings. Ramadan changes opening hours across the island, and the Embassy has issued notices of Ramadan timings for its application centre in past years. The Manama events calendar has the garba nights, concerts and sadhyas as members and organisers post them.

Indian Manama runs on WhatsApp. There is a group for every association, every school's parents, every building with enough Indian tenants, every district association from Kerala, every profession and every cricket or badminton team. The groups are how the community has organised itself for years, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

What the groups are good at, and what they are not

They are fast. Ask at nine in the evening which clinic near Gudaibiya takes your insurer, or whether a Juffair building lets to families, and someone answers before ten. But you need to know someone to get the link; the links that circulate go stale; most groups show your phone number to every member; and the answers scroll away, so the same questions about the permit, the CPR and school fees are asked every week. The groups are also where scams start: the "job with a visa provided" that needs a fee, the call that spoofs an Embassy or Ministry of External Affairs number and threatens deportation (the Embassy's 21 April 2026 advisory describes exactly this), and the passport "appointment" for sale when the Embassy says appointments are booked on the application centre's own site, icacbh.com, and that its app was discontinued. Anything legitimate can be checked: a job against the LMRA's permit, a flat against a signed lease, a consular service against the Embassy's own page.

What Namaste Community adds

Namaste Community's app and website have local groups, events near you, a directory of Indian businesses and Ask, where members answer each other's questions; you can post anonymously. The local groups for this city are listed at /groups/in/bahrain/manama — open them before you land and you arrive with somewhere to ask. The Manama events page lists Indian events in the city, the Bahrain directory lists Indian businesses, and the Bahrain page is the country-level page.

Your first week, in practice

1. Open the Manama groups and join the general one and the one for your area, language or interest. Read before you post; the paperwork answers are usually there already.
2. Go to one event in your first fortnight: a Samajam evening, an Indian Club tournament, a temple festival or a community stall at a mall festival. It is the quickest way from "the Indian community in Manama" as a phrase to three people whose names you know.
3. Ask the question you actually have, and say where you live and what your employer's sector is: the answer for a nurse in Isa Town is not the answer for a site supervisor in Hidd.
4. When you have found your flat, your clinic and your grocer, leave a review or an answer for the next person from Kochi, Chennai or Lucknow.

The groups near Manama are listed below. If the one you need is not there yet — a parents' group for one school, a team that needs a wicketkeeper — ask in the general Manama group; someone is usually looking for the same thing.

Indians in Manama share the city with other large communities. The Embassy of India says Indians are the largest group of the country's expatriates along with Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Filipinos, Indonesians and Arabs of different nationalities, and Wikipedia describes Gudaibiya as home to large Indian, Filipino, Ethiopian and Pakistani populations. The 2020 census files all of them, India's neighbours included, under "non-Arab Asian countries" (650,996 in the country, 330,946 in the Capital Governorate), so no table we could open splits them by nationality, and this page does not invent a split.

What is the same for everyone

Everything on this page about the LMRA permit, the transfer rules, the registered worker permit, the Wage Protection System, end-of-service pay, the summer midday ban, the bus fares and the taxi tariff applies identically to Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Nepalis. One of the LMRA's own family-visa rules names the subcontinent: for Indian and Pakistani passports, the spouse's name must be written in the passport before the spouse's permit is applied for. The LMRA's complaint routes, the Expat Protection Centre and the call centre are open to every worker, whatever the nationality.

Missions and festivals

Each country has its own embassy for passports and labour welfare. The Embassy of Bangladesh is at House 71, Qufool Avenue, Salihiya (Road 5653, Block 356), Manama, open Sunday to Thursday from 8:30am to 4:30pm, according to its own site. We did not open the Pakistani, Sri Lankan or Nepali embassies' pages (the Sri Lankan and Nepali addresses we tried did not respond on 23 October 2026), so no address or hours for them are printed here; use each embassy's official pages. The Hindu festivals overlap with Nepal's: Dashain and Tihar fall in the same weeks as Navratri and Diwali. The Sri Lankan and Nepali Hindu communities' temples and gatherings are not documented on any page we could open, so ask in the groups.

Shared ground

Where the practical problems are the same, the answers travel. A Nepali nurse, a Sri Lankan accountant and an Indian engineer all need the same permit, the same CPR and the same lease; the LMRA's transfer rules treat them alike; and a worker of any nationality whose wages have stopped can use the complaint route in the work section. The Manama groups and the Bahrain directory are open to all five communities.

Consular services

Bahrain has one Indian mission, the Embassy of India, Manama, at Building 1090, Road 2819, Block 428, Al-Seef, which serves the whole country. It opened in January 1973 and, since 22 September 2026, its ambassador has been Dr Pradeep Singh Rajpurohit, according to the Embassy's website; its home page still carries items from August 2026 that name Vinod K. Jacob as ambassador. The Embassy's office hours are Sunday to Thursday, 8am to 4:30pm. You will rarely need to go there: since 1 August 2025 all consular services, including passport, visa and attestation, have been provided at the Indian Consular Application Centre (ICAC), No. 234, First Floor, Bahrain Mall, Avenue 28, Building 184, Block 410, Sanabis, Manama, open Saturday to Thursday from 8am to 6pm, excluding public holidays. Appointments are booked at icacbh.com (the Embassy's app for it was discontinued); collection of a ready document needs no appointment. The ICAC adds a service charge of 180 fils (BD 0.180) and bank charges, and offers form filling, photocopying, photographs and courier at no extra charge. The ICAC's contact is +973 6663 3311 (call and WhatsApp) and [email protected].

The process for an Indian passport is the same as anywhere: register and fill in the application on the passport portal, print it, stick a 2 inch by 2 inch photograph on a white background, sign it, and submit it with the original passport, copies of its first and last pages and of your visa or residence permit, and the fee, at the ICAC with an appointment; personal presence is mandatory. A passport can be re-issued within one year before expiry or within three years after it, and after three years the application needs a sworn affidavit. The Embassy resumed Tatkaal passport service on 2 April 2026.

Each fee includes BD 0.800 for the Indian Community Welfare Fund. The Embassy has also announced an e-OCI card; its notice is on the Embassy's notice page.

The numbers to save

The Embassy also runs the MADAD portal for grievances about any consular service, and its advisory of 21 April 2026 warns that fraudsters spoof Ministry of External Affairs numbers (such as +91-11 2301 7160) and that its officials do not phone for personal information.

Safety in 2026

Everyday safety is not the issue: the tourism authority says Bahrain ranks highly for walking alone at night, and 999 is free. 2026 added a set of dates and instructions. - 28 February. Iranian drones and missiles were fired at Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based in Juffair; the Interior Ministry said residential buildings in and around Manama were damaged and Civil Defence was putting out fires, and schools and universities moved to remote learning (The New Arab). Juffair was evacuated that day, one American's account in Defense One said, though the article does not say who was moved. - 2 March. Bahrain's airspace was closed and flights from the civilian airport were suspended (Defense One). - 8 March. The Bahrain Defence Force said its air defences had destroyed 95 missiles and 164 drones. It asked residents to stay indoors and go out only when necessary, to stay away from affected sites and suspicious objects, not to film military operations or debris sites, not to spread rumours, and to rely on official channels (Gulf News). - 20 March. India's prime minister spoke to King Hamad and thanked him for his support for the well-being of the Indian community in Bahrain (Embassy home page). - 2 April. The Embassy resumed Tatkaal passport services. - 9 April. Gulf Air flew its first scheduled flight from Bahrain after the US–Iranian ceasefire (ch-aviation). - 9 July. The Defence Force said it had intercepted several more Iranian air attacks and asked residents not to approach or touch unfamiliar objects that might be debris (Qatar News Agency).

We found no report that settles the position in late October: follow the Interior Ministry, the Defence Force and the Embassy. The rule to remember is the one the authorities gave in March: stay indoors, go out only when you must, keep away from debris and report it. Keep a charged phone, a little cash and copies of your passport, CPR and residence permit where you can reach them, and a copy of the family's papers.

What to read next

The Bahrain page is the country-level page, the Diwali page for Manama has the listings for November, and the Manama events and groups are live.