mumbai travel blog

Dharavi in Mumbai is the biggest slum in Asia. It occupies an area of 430 acres and is home to over one million people. The slum is a working city in its own right, with an annual turnover of over US $660 Million Dollars.

Interest in the slums of Mumbai has increased recently in part due to the best selling book Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts. At every book stall on the streets of Mumbai you will find a copy of this book. The book retells the authors escape from an Australian prison and flight to Bombay, where he ends up living in a slum.

Reality Tours in Mumbai run tours to the Dharavi slum. Reality Tours was set up by an Indian and Englishman, and the tour office is in Colaba, just around the corner from Leopolds Cafe, which features so prominently in Shantaram.

We started the tour at 1.45, meeting our guide for the day at Churchgate station. From there we got a local train to Mahim train station. The short tour on offer starts at 2.30 and goes until 5pm. You may be wondering how you are going to fill in two and a half hours in a slum. It turns out that there is quite alot to see.

A common concept of a slum is of huts made of plastic sheeting, bamboo and roofing iron with people sitting around begging. Upon arrival at the train station exit you come to a high street of brick and concrete buildings with shops and even an elaborate Hindu temple.

The tour takes you through different neighbourhoods within the slum, which starts off by visiting various factories. Much of Mumbais recycling industry is in the slum. Pretty much any thing that can be recycled is recycled here, from paper, fabric, to 44 gallon fuel drums. There are numerous other industries going on as well. Shoes, clothing and suitcase factories, and leather tanneries to name but a few.

The guide is a local and he has a good rapport with the people we meet on the way, stopping regularly to chat. I thought I would be hassled the whole time like you are in the rest of the city, but no one in there was begging. You will get kids following you everywhere, saying hi cheerily and asking where you are from, as they do in India. The kids are inquisitive, and if you say you are from a Commonwealth nation you may get dragged into a game of cricket.

Within Dharavi there are industrial, retail and residential areas. Within the residential areas there are Muslim, Hindu, and a Christian area. In the muslim area we stopped for a drink at one of those shops that sells just about everything. We met three schools teachers covered in head to toe by the veil. My mind imagined three little Mother Theresa-esque looking ladies sent to do good in the slums of Mumbai.

We went to the school where they taught and once inside the classroom they unveiled to reveal three beautiful young women who would not be out of place in a Bollywood dance scene. It was a pre-school, and the kids put on a dance show for us.

Many of the buildings are permanent structures with running water and plumbing. The laneways become quite narrow, at many points only a metre wide, with a drain running down the middle. The doorways are usually curtains, and sometimes you see a shop deep within these alleys. I saw a couple of video arcades with classic 1980’s games in here as well.

The tour though runs at cost and 80% of the proceeds go to a local NGO (charity). Photography is prohibited on the tour. Obviously a tour through a slum is not for everyone. Some people may see the tour as voyeuristic. For others though it puts a human face to the statistics that are so easily quoted and dissolves the assumption that slum dwellers are just sitting around doing nothing.

This article was written by James Clark, owner and editor of itravelnet.com. Travel notes from James can be read at Notes from the Editor.

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