Reality Tours & Travel’s 2.5 hour walking
tour aims to give visitors the most
accurate picture possible of Dharavi
and life in this vast slum. Guests interact
with locals as much as possible without
disrupting their lives or work.
These trips have two key goals. The first
is to break down negative stereotypes.
Local slum residents are employed
as guides and staff to show visitors
how Dharavi is the heart of small-scale
industry in Mumbai. Guests get to see
recycling, pottery making, embroidery,
bakery, a soap factory, leather tanning,
poppadum-making and much more.
And because groups are kept small,
a strict dress code is observed, and
photography is not allowed, the tours
avoid disrupting the residents’ lives or
treating them as attractions.
The second goal is to support the
inhabitants of Dharavi, and 80%
of Reality Tours & Travel’s profits
go to development projects in the
communities it visits. Run by its sister
NGO, Reality Gives, projects range
from computer, English and soft skills
classes for 16 to 30 year old students, a
girls football program, an art room and
a ‘Barefoot’ acupuncturists clinic, to the
neatly named I Was a Sari, a women’s
empowerment scheme that turns old
saris into designer products.
Reality Tours & Travel’s success is
growing by the year. In 2006, it hosted
just 397 guests; by 2013 that number
had risen to 16,265. It has so far spent
US$134,000 on Reality Gives activities
over its seven years of operation; and it
recently expanded to working in New
Delhi with the Sanjay Colony slum. All
together this means many more people
are returning home from a holiday in
India with an original story to tell.