While I was in Mumbai in January, I took part in a walking tour of one
of its biggest slums. I remember reading about these tours of Dharavi, one of Mumbai’s
most population-dense neighbourhoods, when they started a few years ago and
spawned a debate on ‘slum tourism’. “It’s voyeuristic to peek into poor
peoples’ lives,” slammed some. “This is a reality of Indian cities, and how 55%
of the population of Mumbai lives,” pointed out others. My take is that slums
are certainly a facet of every Indian city and ignoring them won’t make them go
away. But I don’t know if I would have
chosen to go one of these tours if I wasn’t researching a travel article on ‘off-beat’
walking tours in Mumbai...
