MUMBAI · INDIA
Seven islands, one maximum city.
Dharavi walks and Bollywood studios, the Gateway of India and the ferry to Elephanta, street food through the bazaars and the long curve of Marine Drive at dusk. The whole of Bombay, from Colaba to the caves.
Only here
Three things that are pure Bombay.
Forts and ferries and food tours have a version in every city. A working slum that runs a billion-dollar trade, a lunchbox army the business schools study, and a temple island cut from solid rock belong to this one alone.
A city inside the city
A Dharavi Walk
A million people live and work in a single square mile, and that square mile turns over an estimated billion dollars a year in recycling, leather, pottery and papad. The good walks are led by people from the lanes, who show you the workshops and the trade, not a spectacle. There is nowhere else like it.
- 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
The city at work
Dabbawalas & Dhobi Ghat
Every weekday five thousand dabbawalas carry two hundred thousand home-cooked lunches across the city by train and bicycle and hand each one to the right desk by lunchtime, a relay so accurate that Harvard wrote it up. A few stops away, the Dhobi Ghat washes the city’s laundry in nine hundred open-air stone troughs, by hand, as it has for over a century.
- 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
An island of gods
The Elephanta Caves
An hour by ferry from the Gateway of India, a small island holds a set of sixth-century cave temples cut straight into the basalt. At their heart is the Trimurti, a six-metre three-faced Shiva carved from the living rock. UNESCO listed the caves in 1987, and you still reach them the slow way, across the harbour by boat.
- 1 Elephanta Caves & Island Guided Private Tour
- 2 Mumbai: Elephanta Caves Half-Day Guided Tour with Expert
- 3 Private Elephanta Caves & Mumbai Sightseeing Tour with AC Car
Start here
If you only do one thing in Bombay.
More first-time visitors build their trip around this one than anything else in the city.
The classics
Mumbai's Most Popular Tours
The Gateway of India, Marine Drive, the Dharavi walk and the Elephanta ferry. The days most visitors come to Bombay for.
Where to begin
The Bombay a first trip is built around.
The city sightseeing, the Dharavi walk, the Bollywood studios, the Elephanta ferry, the heritage trails and the street-food crawls. The handful of days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big question
How to visit Dharavi.
It is home to a million people and runs a billion-dollar trade in recycling, leather and pottery. The good walks treat it as a working neighbourhood, not a spectacle. Three things to get right before you go.
Eat the city
Vada pav, bhel and the bazaar trail.
Bombay eats on its feet. The vada pav cart outside the station, pav bhaji off a hot griddle at Chowpatty, bhel puri in a paper cone on the sand, and the Mughlai grills of Mohammed Ali Road after dark. The food walks string the best of it into one long, hungry afternoon.
Read the guide: the best street-food tours in Mumbai →Haggle for it
Crawford Market to Chor Bazaar.
The island city shops in its bazaars. Crawford Market under its Victorian clock tower, the antiques and salvage of Chor Bazaar, the gold lanes of Zaveri Bazaar and the cotton of Mangaldas. Colaba Causeway for the souvenirs, Linking Road in Bandra for the knock-offs.
See the market & bazaar tours →The seafront
The Queen’s Necklace, after dark.
Marine Drive sweeps three kilometres along the bay from Nariman Point to Chowpatty, Art Deco facades on one side and the Arabian Sea on the other. At night the streetlights curve into a single bright arc the city calls the Queen’s Necklace, and half of Bombay comes down to sit on the sea wall and watch the tide come in.
Mumbai after dark →Victorian & Art Deco
Two world-heritage cities, face to face.
The Fort holds one of the great architectural face-offs: a row of High Victorian Gothic, the spires of the university and the vast railway terminus, looking across the Oval Maidan at the longest run of Art Deco outside Miami. UNESCO listed the whole ensemble in 2018, and the walking tours read it building by building.
- 1 Group Guided Walking Tour in Fort and Colaba
- 2 Private Guided Walking Tour in Fort & Colaba
- 3 Private Guided Walking Tour in Bandra Queen of Suburbs
By time of day
Bombay, morning to midnight.
The city keeps a different clock at every hour. A dawn walk through the markets before the heat, the cool of the caves through the afternoon, and the seafront lighting up at night.
Morning
Start before the heat.The Fort heritage walk and the wholesale markets are best at dawn, the dabbawalas sorting the morning tiffins at the station while the city is still cool.
Afternoon
Out on the water, or into the rock.Take the midday ferry across the harbour to Elephanta, or duck into the cool of the Kanheri caves and the Sanjay Gandhi forest while the city bakes.
After dark
The night shift.Marine Drive lights up into the Queen’s Necklace, the grills of Mohammed Ali Road fire up, and the bars of Bandra and Colaba fill. Bombay barely sleeps.
Bollywood
The busiest film city on earth.
India makes more films than any country in the world, and most of them are shot here. Film City in the northern suburbs is a thousand-acre back-lot of painted skylines and song-and-dance sets; the studio tours walk you onto a live shoot, through the dance routines and the make-believe streets where the blockbusters are built.
See all 37 Bollywood tours →By area
Bombay, neighbourhood by neighbourhood.
Fort and Colaba for the heritage and the Gateway. Bandra for the cafes and the sea wall. Dharavi for the working city. Elephanta for the caves. Borivali for the forest and the pagoda. South Mumbai for the lot in a day.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
A heritage walk if you want the architecture. A food tour if you want the bazaars. The Elephanta ferry if you want the sea. Bollywood, the caves, the markets, or the city by night.
Plan it
A perfect Bombay weekend.
First time in the city? Three days that hit the essentials without a wasted hour, from the heritage core to the island caves.
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