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Finally, you’ve made the decision to visit Mumbai and explore all it has to offer! We’ve put together a summary to help you decide how to get into the city upon arrival at Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport: 1) Taxi This is a straightforward method to get into the city. There are two types of taxis […]

My name is Balaji and I am 27 years old. I live in Dharavi and have worked as a tour guide at Reality Tours and Travel for over 5 years now. As a local from the slum, I have a lot to say about my neighbourhood – the way it has changed with time and […]

Mumbai is known to be a fast city, where life just passes you by. Hailing from Mumbai, there are still various facets of our city which we are not exposed to. Mohammad Ali Road, one of the oldest quarters of the city, is one such facet most Mumbaikars have never experienced. Throughout the year, the […]

Our very first tour of Dharavi was in January 2006; shortly after this, we introduced a ‘No Photography Policy’. Some press coverage had been critical of people going to Dharavi and taking photos, and when we saw the results, we agreed. Over a decade on and the policy remains unchanged: guests on our educational slum tours are not […]

My name is Manoj Ramesh Medwal and I was born and brought up in Mumbai. My parents both come from Delhi and I have one elder brother and one younger one. We live together with my mum. My elder brother is married and has two wonderful children. I’m really proud to be a nice uncle. We […]

My name is Shehnaz and I am working as a tour guide at Reality Tours and Travel. My family is originally from Bihar but my father moved to Delhi about 25 years ago to work and sustain the family. I was born in Delhi in a middle-class family and we are six siblings. My father […]

Slum tourism has become extremely popular in the 21st century, especially in Mumbai. With its escalating use, throughout media and existing scholarship slum tourism has generated a heated and critical debate especially concerning ethics and its so-called ‘voyeuristic’ nature. However, scholarly research on slum tourism remains limited and fragmented. Reality Tours & Travel began, first […]

Salman Rushdie once wrote that “to understand just one life you have to swallow the world“. In Dharavi there’s an estimated one million lives. In Sanjay Colony, there’s a not inconsiderable 50,000. As we try to convey on our educational tours, these communities are incredibly complex. Whilst the word ‘slum’ evokes a negative view (The […]

Since 1984 ‘Technology, Entertainment, Design’ (more commonly known the world over as ‘TED’) have been sharing ‘ideas worth spreading’ relating to all things, from education to business, science to development. In the last 30 years, they’ve shared over 2,400 talks in more than 100 languages which have been viewed 500 million times. These talks are a regular […]

India is a very diverse country and every city has its own rich history and culture. A particularly striking aspect of this is the range of different festivals celebrated throughout the country. One of the biggest festivals celebrated around this time of the year in Mumbai is “Ganesh Chaturti”. Ganesha is the son of Lord Shiva […]

In a loose replication of Portuguese adventurers centuries ago, over the last couple of weeks thousands of the world’s top athletes have been seeking precious metals in Brazil. However one country in particular is slightly conspicuous by its absence from the upper echelons of that ultimate game of temporary national one-upmanship, the Olympics medal table. […]

For the past two years, I have had the privilege of working in Dharavi: the heart of Mumbai, its center of small scale enterprise, and “one of the largest ‘slums’ in Asia”. Dharavi is an incredibly unique area that outsiders rarely get the opportunity to work in and learn from for such an extended period […]