MUMBAI · INDIA
The Maximum City, one street at a time.
Dharavi walks and dabbawala mornings, Bollywood studios and street-food crawls, the Elephanta caves and the Gateway on the Arabian Sea. The tours that show you the real Mumbai, reviewed.
Only here
Three Mumbai institutions you won’t find anywhere else.
Street food and skyline views exist in every big city. The lunchbox network, the recycling megacity and the open-air laundry are Mumbai’s alone.
A city within the city
Dharavi
Dharavi packs around a million people and an estimated billion-dollar recycling-and-leather economy into a couple of square kilometres, the neighbourhood the world met through Slumdog Millionaire. Resident-led walks trade the cliché for the workshops, the potters’ lane and the rooftops, cameras left in your pocket.
- 1 Dharavi slum tour in Mumbai by Female tour guides of the slum
- 2 Mumbai: Dharavi Slum, DhobiGhat, and Dabbawallas Tour
- 3 Dharavi Slum Tour
Lunch, delivered
The Dabbawalas
Every working day around 5,000 dabbawalas move some 200,000 home-cooked lunches across Mumbai by train, bicycle and head-balanced crate, and almost never lose one. The accuracy became a Harvard Business School case study. Follow a run from the station platform to the office door.
- 1 Mumbai: Dharavi Slum, DhobiGhat, and Dabbawallas Tour
- 2 Private Combo Tours Sightseeing + Dharavi Slum + Dhobi Ghat & Dabbawalas
- 3 Dharavi, Dhobighat, and Mumbai Dabbawallas
Open-air, by hand
Dhobi Ghat
Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat is the world’s largest open-air laundry: rows of concrete flogging-stones where the city’s washing has been beaten clean by hand for over a century. From the bridge above, the drying lines run to the horizon in every colour at once.
- 1 Mumbai: Dharavi Slum, DhobiGhat, and Dabbawallas Tour
- 2 Mumbai: Dhobi Ghat Laundry and Dharavi Slum Tour with Local
- 3 Mumbai: Dharavi Slum & Dhobi Ghat Laundry Tour
Start here
If you only do one day in Mumbai.
First time in the city and short on time? This is the day most travellers build the whole trip around.
The classics
Mumbai's Most Popular Tours
The Gateway and Colaba, the Dharavi walks, the Elephanta ferry and the street-food nights. The days most travellers come for.
Where to begin
The Mumbai a first trip is built around.
The Dharavi walks, the Elephanta ferry, the Bollywood studios, the street-food crawls, the heritage of Fort and Colaba and the city sightseeing. The handful of experiences most itineraries are planned around, with the best way to do each.
The big question
How to see Dharavi.
Asia’s largest informal settlement is also its most misread. The how matters: who guides you, how small the group, and what the camera does. Three ways to visit with respect.
Bollywood
The city that films itself.
Mumbai is the home of Hindi cinema, the busiest film industry on earth. Studio tours run onto the sets and backlots of Film City in Goregaon, into a working soundstage, and behind the choreography, the costumes and the song-and-dance the world calls Bollywood, sometimes with a shoot in progress.
Read the guide: the best Bollywood tours in Mumbai →Eat like a local
Mumbai eats on its feet.
Vada pav at a station stall, bhel puri on Chowpatty sand, kebabs down Mohammed Ali Road, a Parsi café breakfast under slow ceiling fans. The city’s food is a street sport, and the best crawls hand you plate after plate through the lanes where locals actually queue.
See the street-food tours →The waterfront
Where the city meets the sea.
Mumbai is seven islands the sea never fully gave up. Marine Drive curves along the bay in a string of lights the locals call the Queen’s Necklace, the Bandra-Worli Sea Link arcs across the water at sunset, and ferries still leave the Gateway for the open harbour.
Cruises & boat trips →Fort & Colaba
The Bombay the Raj built.
South Mumbai is one of the great Victorian Gothic and Art Deco cities, a UNESCO World Heritage ensemble. Heritage walks take in the cathedral-like Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the High Court, the university clock tower and the seafront Deco apartments, the Bombay the British laid out and the city made its own.
- 1 Best South Mumbai Heritage Walk
- 2 Heritage Walk: Recommended by Gigi Hadid as a must-do in Mumbai
- 3 Mumbai: South Mumbai Heritage Walking Guided Tour
By time of day
From the dawn markets to the midnight city.
Mumbai keeps changing shift. The flower market and the fishing docks at first light, the museums and the bazaars through the day, the food streets and the skyline after dark.
First light
Mumbai by dawn.The flower market at Dadar, the fishing boats unloading at Sassoon Dock, the dhobis starting work, the city before the heat and the crowds.
Through the day
The full city.The Gateway, the Prince of Wales museum, the hanging gardens and the long curve of Marine Drive, the icons in a single sweep.
After dark
The night shift.Street food down lit-up lanes, the bazaars at full tilt, and the skyline from the far side of the bay.
Across the harbour
An island of gods carved from the rock.
An hour by ferry from the Gateway, Elephanta Island hides a set of sixth-century cave temples cut straight into the basalt, a UNESCO World Heritage Site crowned by the three-headed Trimurti of Shiva, nearly six metres of carved stone staring back through fifteen centuries.
See all 54 Elephanta tours →By place
Mumbai, neighbourhood by neighbourhood.
Fort and Colaba for the colonial grandeur. Dharavi for the working city. Bandra for the sea-link and the stars. Elephanta for the caves across the harbour. Kanheri for the forest. Mahalaxmi for the open-air laundry.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
Walk the heritage quarter. Crawl the food streets. Ferry to the caves. Step onto a film set, haggle through the bazaars, or take to the water.
Plan it
Three days in Mumbai.
First time in the city? Here is a route that covers the icons, the working city and the harbour without a wasted hour.
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