A foreign tourist's guide to experiencing the many Mumbais in Mumbai

India's largest city is known for both the poverty of its slums and the richness of its history, museums, nightclubs, restaurants and street food

The profile of the Dharavi slum in Mumbai, one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the world, may have risen when it was showcased in the Oscar-winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” but my tour guide didn’t particularly care about that at the moment. What concerned him more was the pejorative nature of the word “slum” and how outsiders perceived Dharavi, an area smaller than New York City’s Central Park but where about a million people live and work.

“We don’t want people to think slums are dangerous and full of lazy people,” said Hitesh Vaidya, a guide for Reality Tours and