The Mumbai by Dawn Tour｜India

The Mumbai by Dawn Tour
Recommended by Nigella Lawson & Nat Geo Traveller!
Experience a side of Mumbai that few visitors get the chance to see on this early-morning city tour. You’ll wake up early in time to see a fish auction, a flower market, and a vegetable market set up all along both sides of a bridge, all before most people even crawl out of bed!

Have you ever thought about where your food comes from or how that newspaper reaches your hotel room?
This 4-hour tour gives you an insight into how trade works in Mumbai and the city’s life that begins at dawn. The emphasis on fresh food in Mumbai makes mornings so important in terms of trade.
Drive to different marketplaces to see the business traders go about their daily routines. Your first interaction will be with a newspaper vendor and then you walk across the street to the fruit, flowers, and vegetable wholesalers who are surrounded by men and women bargaining for fresh supplies for the day ahead.
If you are still sleepy – the next stop is bound to wake you up, the smell of fish! The Sassoon docks are an incredible experience. It is the city’s first wet dock and the only one open to the public. You will also take a small distance train ride and at the end of the tour, you will attend Morning Prayer in one of the famous before being dropped back off at your accommodation.

Tour Highlights:
1. Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus: Possibly the most architecturally stunning building in India, Victoria Terminus Railway Station, now CST, sees a record of six hundred and sixty thousand footfalls daily, making it the busiest station in Mumbai. At dawn, the CST station also serves as the city’s largest newspaper sorting area.

2. Sassoon Dock: Travelers understand the life of the Koli fisherfolk (the original inhabitants of Mumbai) and also witness the arrival and grading of 50 tonnes of fish. They also witness a one-of-its-kind fish auction of the famous Bombay Duck.

3. Dadar Market: Witness the early morning color and fragrance of this market.

4. Dhobi Ghat: Every day, thousands of dhobis (washermen) scrub, flog, wash, and bleach clothes on rows of open concrete wash pens. More than 7000 dhobis wash more than 1 lakh clothes every single day. This includes everything from hotel and hospital linens to clothes from neighborhood laundries.