Private Mumbai Sightseeing Tour Including Dharavi Slum

Day 1: Mumbai

Start your private tour with pickup from your Mumbai hotel, or the cruise port or railway station. Delve into the streets in a private, air-conditioned car with your guide, and hear about Mumbai’s history, including its time under British rule from the 18th to the 20th century, and how it is India’s second-largest city, with a population of about 18.4 million. Stop first at the vast Dharavi Slum, Asia’s biggest, and home to nearly a million people. Take a walk through this town-within-a-town, crammed with thousands of makeshift huts. Learn about daily life here, and pass tiny bread and sweet shops, interspersed with dimly-lit manufacturing units hosting small-scale clothes-, pottery-, and soap-making businesses. Absorb the strong sense of community, and visit the plastic and metal recycling yard, where workers sort materials for re-use, before delving into Kumbharwada, the community of clay potters dubbed the ‘city of lamps.’ Explore the lanes here, weaving through thousands of hand-made, kiln-fired pots being crafted as oil lamps for festivals. Having explored Dharavi, take a tour of the colonial and modern faces of Mumbai. Admire the Gateway of India, built to commemorate a 1911 visit by King George V, and see the imposing Taj Mahal Palace hotel, opened in 1903. Hear historical tales and anecdotes en route, and stop at landmarks including the UNESCO-listed Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station, Mumbai University with its Big Ben-style Rajabai Clock Tower, and the Oval Cricket Ground and Bombay High Court. See Mumbai’s dhobi ghat — Asia’s biggest open-air laundry — together with Mahatma Gandhi's former residence, and the Hanging Gardens on top of water tanks. Plus, drive past the colonial buildings on Marine Drive, seeing the Prince of Wales Museum, Flora Fountain, the Telegraph Office, and more. Your tour then ends back at the departure point.