Mumbai gives an incredible range of reports, from exploring the city’s fantastical structure to escaping right into a tangle of the jungle or going birdwatching. You can, inside the area of a few days, take a boat ride to Elephanta Island, with its historical cave temples, discover the units of Bollywood, strive historic Iranian recipes in a historical Parsi café, or cycle thru the city inside the early morning because it slowly wakes up from a heavy sleep. Get exploring with Telegraph Travel’s Mumbai professional, Abigail Blasi.
Colaba & Fort
Marvel at Mumbai’s outstanding railway station
So gothic that you may assume bats to come swooping out from its pinnacles, domes, and buttresses, Mumbai’s major railway station, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, is the preeminent emblem of the nineteenth-century colonial-era structure that dots the city, built to have fun Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. The station may also have colonial origins. However, its consistent throng of passengers epitomizes Mumbai’s power extra than anywhere else.
Insider’s tip: The structure is an excellent reimagining of Indian lifestyle through 19th-century British eyes and is not to be overlooked. The station looks spectacularly lit up after darkish when its architectural frills are artistically illuminated in jelly-brilliant LED colors.
Contact: 00 ninety one 22 2369 0992
Opening times: Various
Price: loose
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus
Mumbai’s foremost railway station is the preeminent brand of the 19th-century colonial-era architecture that dots the city CREDIT: GETTY/PORRAS CHAUDHARY.
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Cycle via the metropolis at dawn
As Mumbai slowly stirs, it’s an exquisite experience to take a 14km (nine-mile) bicycle circuit with Reality Tours. People are still speedy asleep at the pavement, devotees head to early morning prayer, and avenue-aspect stalls brew the primary cup of chai with the rising solar. The smooth-going excursion takes in a few off-beat locations: Sassoon Dock, the smelly but fascinating fish market, and Bombay Panjrapole, a cow sanctuary.
Insider’s tip: No want to have breakfast as you’ll finish at a nearby café, gorging on a regular South Indian breakfast (crispy dosa/pancake served with veggies and coconut chutney).
Contact : 00 ninety one 9820822253 ; realitytoursandtravel.Com
Opening instances: 8am-6pm
Price: ££
Cycle Tours
Take a cycling excursion through the city, travel some off-beat places with Sassoon Dock, and revel in the ‘actual’ Mumbai CREDIT: GETTY/FRÉDÉRIC SOLTAN.
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Scope out the superb structure
Founded using city architects, Bombay Heritage Walks have been uncovering Mumbai’s extraordinary architectural layers for two decades. You’ll sense dwarfed by using the imperial bravado of the sea-dealing with Gateway of India and enlightened using the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, a feverish Victorian Gothic symphony of a layout. Learn about the homes’ colorful histories, and find out sudden corners, together with the station’s cathedral-like vaulted ceiling.
Insider’s tip: As well as deciding among extraordinary routes that take hours each, members can choose an aggregate of the 2, taking three-and-a-1/2 hours.
Contact: 00 91 22 23690992; bombayheritagewalks.Com
Opening times: 24 hrs
Price: unfastened
Heritage Walks
Mumbai is chock-a-block with exciting architecture CREDIT: GETTY/DINODIA PHOTO.
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Hang out at a Parsi café
Britannia & Co are soaring ceilings, droopy chandeliers, whirring fanatics that stir up the muggy city day, and tall stained-glass arched doorways establishing onto the road; Britannia & Co are one in every of Mumbai’s few final grand old Parsi cafes. It’s nevertheless run by using the ninety five-12 months-vintage Boman Kohinoor, who automatically regales foreign visitors with affectionate musings at the white dome and set in balmy palm-fringed gardens. However, do spend time exploring the 50,000-sturdy series of artifacts inside, which encompass hand-painted snuff bottles and the private suit of armor of Mughal emperor Akbar.
Insider’s tip: While away contented hours inside the cool museum galleries to break out the warmth and bear in mind to pop to the museum cafeteria, which is ready in lush inexperienced gardens. There’s an especially top museum shop too.
Contact : 00 91 22 2284 4484
Opening times: Daily, 10.15 am-6 pm
Price: £
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya museum
Escape the warmth in the cool galleries of the majestic Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya museum CREDIT: 2014 HINDUSTAN TIMES/MINT
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Get your Bollywood on
The escapism dreamed up through Bollywood studios is part of the lifeblood of India, and even though there are main movie studios somewhere else within the usa, no others have pretty the preserve on the countrywide imagination as those in Mumbai. Through Bollywood Tours, glimpse some at the back of the scenes motion at a taking pictures studio and experience the fascination your self.
Insider’s tip: Fully studies the excursion groups as a few are opportunity clothes under similar names who fee for an overpriced, underwhelming tour.
Contact : 00 91-22-22668786 ; bollywoodtours.In
Opening times: numerous
Price: £££
Bollywood studios
Bollywood is a part of the lifeblood of India, and going behind the curtain is a splendid way to experience it CREDIT: GETTY/DREAMPICTURES.
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Byculla East
Explore the riches of Mumbai’s oldest museum
Amid the pastel-colored colonnades of the superbly restored Dr. Bau Daji Lad Museum, discover several of Mumbai’s maximum high-quality treasures, including the elephant that gave Elephanta island its name. The museum is a survey of the town’s soul, subculture, and records: you couldn’t fail to be beguiled via its collection of early maps of the nascent city or presentations of traditional headwear on an array of busts from the 1930s.
Insider’s Tip: The museum has a hectic software of workshops and talks for adults and kids, from creative writing to guided walks – check the internet site before you move.
Contact : 00 ninety one 22 2373 1234 ; bdlmuseum.Org
Opening instances: 10 am-6 pm; closed Wednesdays
Price: £
Dr. Bau Daji Lad Museum
Dr. Bau Daji Lad Museum houses several of Mumbai’s most terrific treasures, a brilliant creamy cake of colonial-generation splendor.
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Elephant Island
Get lost in historical temples
An hour-long boat journey from the Gateway of India, and you’re out on a thickly-wooded island, a Unesco World Heritage website, and seemingly a world away from the mainland. Its rock-cut temples date to the fifth century; their columns are carved out of the hillside and renowned for their mythological engravings. The biggest cave, complete of courtyards, shrines, and halls, is fronted with the aid of a seven-meter-high sculpture of Shiva, the destroyer.
Insider’s tip: There are masses of courses presenting their offerings, but you may wander around at your leisure, assisted by guidebook pamphlets or an app.
Opening instances: 9 am-5 pm; closed Mondays
Price: ££
Elephanta Island
Visit Elephanta Island, a Unesco World Heritage site with stunning rock-cut temples CREDIT: GETTY/JANE SWEENEY.
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Northern Mumbai
Catch your breath in the town’s ‘green lung.’
The exceptional element about Mumbai is that it contains a massive inexperienced lung, the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. Found north of the metropolis, a lushly inexperienced landscape rippling into the distance, it’s for an area of top-notch natural splendor. Splendidly numerous and sliced through with streams and rivers, it hosts thousands of plant species, scuttling reptiles, birds, deer, monkeys, and a few shy leopards.
Insiders tip: Book an excursion with the Bombay Natural History Society, which has access to all the park’s sights, maximum substantially the Kanheri Caves, consisting of 100 Buddhist dwellings dating lower back to the first century BC. Contact : 00 91 22 2886 0362 ; sgnp.Maharashtra.Gov.In
Opening instances : 7.30am-6pm; closed Mondays
