Passers-by cheered on the raucous procession festooned with banners and flags as the delegates brought their message to the streets of Mumbai for the first time since the WSF got underway in the suburb of Goregaon last Friday. The WSF participants from members of the Council of Europe to local Dalits' rights groups rallied through the streets for one last hurrah before parting.

As the blustery Mumbai evening sky gave way to night, the participants gathered to listen to words of encouragement from Pakistani human-rights activist Asma Jehangir, chairing the star-studded panel that also included India's ex-president K R Narayanan, the leader of the Ecuadorean indigenous people's movement Blanca Chancuso and Nguyen Binh, Vietnam's vice-president.

The highlight of the closing show was a sparkling musical performance from legend of Brazilian music and the country's Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil.

Participants bade the new friends they had made and alliances they had forged a fond farewell with promises to meet again at the next such extravaganza of international solidarity. "It has truly been an experience to meet so many activists from all over the world," enthused Asian-American activist Ann Cheng from San Francisco, "It has really renewed my sense of what's possible."

The excitement and energy of the event, which organisers have termed a huge success, has been almost palpable. The WSF has brought together over 100,000 delegates from 130 countries for six days of high-powered conferences, seminars and workshops to discuss such weighty subjects as land, water and food sovereignty and militarism, war and peace, as well as giving activists around the world a chance to get together and celebrate their solidarity.

Prerana Reddy, part of a team here to shoot a one-hour special on the WSF for FreeSpeechTV, believes that this has been the real accomplishment of the WSF.

"The reason you come to the WSF is to get the energy of other people who are working in local ways that never get publicised . . . There's a lot of people who feel that the things we want to accomplish are impossible and so we need to remind ourselves of the successes and come together and disseminate that information internationally because no-one else is going to do that for us."

Another reason is, of course, networking, and the WSF has provided a way for people working on connected issues with similar goals to get together to exchange experiences and ideas.

There have been reports of friction between some of the groups furthest from the mainstream, such as sex-workers, the transgendered and gay and lesbian rights groups, and the more conservative local organisations. Dalits' rights groups have also complained of poor treatment by other delegates and even event organisers.

But, for the most part, the coming together of such disparate groups has been successful as alliances have been forged and common ground reached. "It has been really something to see all the mingling," says Bangladeshi activist Ivan Jaigirdar, "For the first time I'm seeing the inter-connectedness of it all."