Mumbai moves before you do. These are the days worth blocking out.
Which Dharavi walk is led by people who grew up there. What the Elephanta ferry costs and the months it does not sail. Whether Film City is worth half a day north. Reviews of every tour you can book in the city.
Dharavi, Elephanta, the laundry at Mahalaxmi and one long day in Agra.
The four bookings most first trips to Mumbai get built around. What each one costs, and what the travellers who took it say.
01The first walkDharavi slum tour in Mumbai by Female tour guides of the slumDharavi led by women who grew up in it: the recycling sheds, the potters at Kumbharwada, the leather workshops.
02The whole islandFull-Day Sightseeing Tour of MumbaiOne long loop by car — the Gateway, the hanging gardens, Dhobi Ghat and the terminus — with a guide who talks through the traffic.
03The harbour morningElephanta Caves & Island Guided Private TourThe launch out of the Gateway to Elephanta, 120 steps up from the jetty, and a six-metre Shiva cut into the rock.
04The long day out1-Day Trip to Taj Mahal and Agra from Mumbai with Both Side Commercial FlightsOut on the dawn flight, the Taj Mahal by mid-morning, back in Mumbai the same night.
By car, on foot, or on a local train: three ways to take Mumbai on.
The island is thirty kilometres end to end and the traffic decides everything else. Pick the shape of the day first, then pick the tour.
Dharavi, Dhobi Ghat, and the lunch that finds you at your desk.
Around a million people live and work in Dharavi, and the walks that go in are led by people who grew up there, with a share of the fee going back into the neighbourhood. At Mahalaxmi the open-air laundry has run the same way for over a century. And every weekday the dabbawalas move two hundred thousand lunch tins across the city on the local trains.
Dharavi and the full-day city loop outsell everything else in Mumbai.
Every Mumbai review →The days out more travellers take than any others in the city, and what earns each of them the place.
1
Dharavi slum tour in Mumbai by Female tour guides of the slum
Explore Dharavi with a female resident guide, meet Mumbai’s working community, and see its homes, businesses, and daily life on a thoughtful 2-hour walk.
From · $9
Read our review →
2
Full-Day Sightseeing Tour of Mumbai
from $24
3
Private Mumbai Sightseeing Tour (Traveller’s Choice Award Winner)
from $27
4
Elephanta Caves & Island Guided Private Tour
from $42
5
Group Guided Walking Tour in Fort and Colaba
from $16
6
Elephanta Caves Half-Day Guided Tour with Expert
from $30
7
Highlights of Mumbai Sightseeing Tour: TRAVELLERS CHOICE AWARDED
from $33
8
Private Guided Walking Tour in Fort & Colaba
from $36
Elephanta: an hour by launch, fourteen centuries in the rock.
Everything on the island →
Boats leave the Gateway from around nine and take an hour. From the island jetty it is a toy train or a walk to the foot of the steps, then a climb to a temple carved downward out of the hill. The last launch back is earlier than most people plan for.
Ferry, steps and the Trimurti
Launches run from the Gateway to the island jetty, then the steps up past the stalls. A guided trip handles the ticket queue and, more usefully, the timing of the boat back.
Kanheri, inside the national park
A hundred-odd Buddhist caves cut into a basalt ridge inside Sanjay Gandhi National Park, usually paired with the park itself and the gold dome of the Vipassana pagoda on the creek.
A yacht off Marine Drive
Private charters go out of the Gateway into the harbour, past the dockyard and the anchored freighters, with the whole skyline behind you as the light drops.
Mumbai after dark: floodlit Gothic, the Queen’s Necklace and the late kebab lanes.
The terminus stays lit until midnight, the curve of Marine Drive earns its nickname the moment the streetlights come on, and the kebab streets off Mohammed Ali Road do not really start until ten. Night tours run once the heat has finally gone out of the day.
What a day out in Mumbai actually costs.
Every tour on the site grouped by price. A guided morning in this city costs less than the taxi in from the airport.
Walking tours of the Fort, the Dharavi and Dhobi Ghat mornings, street-food crawls and most half-day loops.
Full days with a car and a guide, Film City with transport, the harbour caves and the run up to Lonavala.
Agra and back by air, the two-day cave runs to Ajanta and Ellora, private yachts and the multi-day trips north.
Six ways into Mumbai, from the harbour launches to the film lots.
The working neighbourhoods, an island of rock-cut temples out in the bay, the Gothic and Art Deco streets of the Fort, the studios up at Goregaon, the food lanes, and the one day trip that needs a flight.
Mumbai eats standing up, and it starts with a vada pav.
A potato fritter in a bun outside every station, bhel down on Chowpatty sand, bun maska in an Irani cafe that has not changed the furniture since 1950, and the kebab lanes that only fill up after dark.
Every food walk in the city →
Three things that only happen in this city.
Every big city has a skyline and a market. An open-air laundry the size of a suburb, an island of sixth-century rock temples in the harbour, and the largest film industry on earth are harder to repeat.
Dhobi Ghat and the dabbawalas
Seven hundred concrete washing pens, in use since 1890, worked by families who inherit the pen along with the trade. A few streets east, the dabbawalas collect home-cooked lunches from suburban flats and deliver them into Fort offices by train, bicycle and head, then carry the empty tins back the same afternoon.
- 1Dharavi Slum, DhobiGhat, and Dabbawallas Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 689 reviews
- 2Dhobi Ghat Laundry and Dharavi Slum Tour with Local★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 469 reviews
- 3Dharavi Slum & Dhobi Ghat Laundry Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 352 reviews
The Elephanta caves
An hour out from the Gateway, cut into the basalt of an island the Portuguese named after a stone elephant they later dropped. The main cave was carved downward out of the hill in the sixth century, and the three-headed Shiva at the back of it stands close to six metres high with its eyes shut.
- 1Elephanta Caves & Island Guided Private Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,327 reviews
- 2Elephanta Caves Half-Day Guided Tour with Expert★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,032 reviews
- 3Private Elephanta Caves & Mumbai Sightseeing Tour with AC Car★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 389 reviews
Film City
India releases well over a thousand films a year and a good share of the Hindi ones are shot on the lots at Goregaon, half an hour north of the airport. Studio tours put you on standing sets, into a live shoot when one is running, and usually finish with a dance lesson nobody expects to enjoy.
- 1Best Bollywood Tour with Rahil Khan (Transport Included)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 548 reviews
- 2Ultimate Mumbai Full Day: Sights, Bollywood Dance, Lunch & Spices★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 201 reviews
- 3Bollywood Tour in Mumbai Film City★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 116 reviews
Four Mumbai bookings that will not wait until you land.
Most of this city can be arranged the night before over a cutting chai. These four run on ferry seasons, studio permissions, a monument that closes weekly, and a pickup time that starts before five.
- 01Elephanta Caves & Island Guided Private TourThe launches from the Gateway stop for the whole monsoon and the last boat back leaves mid-afternoon. Out of season the island is simply shut to you.
- 021-Day Trip to Taj Mahal and Agra from Mumbai with Both Side Commercial FlightsThe trip is built around a dawn flight out and a late one home, and the Taj itself closes every Friday. Both are fixed long before the rest of your week is.
- 03Bollywood Tour in Mumbai Film CityStudio access depends on what is shooting that week, so the operator confirms the lot a day or two ahead. Nobody gets past the gate on the day.
- 04The Original Mumbai by Dawn – Recommended by Nigella Lawson & Nat Geo Traveller!The flower and fish markets that make this worth doing are finished by eight, so the pickup lands somewhere around five. That is not a booking you make at midnight.
When the monsoon lands, the launches stop and Mumbai gets better.
Close to two and a half metres of rain falls between June and September. The Elephanta boats stop for the season, the sea comes over the Marine Drive wall in the evening, and everything that happens indoors or under an awning carries on exactly as it was. The hills at Lonavala turn green and grow waterfalls.
- 1Street Food and Night Markets Tourfrom $13
- 2Mumbai Street Food Tourfrom $40
- 3Bombay Express Mumbai Food Tour with 15+ Tastingsfrom $45
The day you leave Mumbai, and where the flights and the expressway go.
Agra is a dawn flight and a night flight with the Taj in between. Ajanta and Ellora are far enough to be worth two days. Lonavala is an hour and a half up the Deccan escarpment and comes alive the week the rain starts. The national park with the leopards in it is still inside the city limits.
- 11-Day Trip to Taj Mahal and Agra from Mumbai with Both Side Commercial Flightsfrom $550
- 2Sanjay Gandhi National Park(SGNP) + Kenheri Caves + Lion Safari + Jain Templefrom $69
- 3Hill-station & Heritage: Lonavala & Karla Caves Tour from Mumbaifrom $72
By neighbourhood, and by island
Gateway, Fort, Mahalaxmi, Dharavi, Bandra, then Marine Drive after dark.
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