As a Mumbaikar, I am in a very good position to advise visitors about what to do and what not to do when visiting Mumbai. I’ve observed what visitors do when visiting the city and how they react to it. The most basic problem is of setting right your expectations. The common complaints of most visitors from South India in particular are : Mumbai is congested and crowded, it’s dirty and there are so many slums. If you kept the following things in mind even before you set foot on Mumbai, you won’t be disappointed: 1. Mumbai city’s population density outstrips that of Tokyo, making it the most densely populated city in the world. So it’s bound to be congested. 2. Mumbai is not a Singapore, by any means. We don’t know if there are any fines for spitting and littering, if there are they are never imposed. So be happy with the few relatively neat boulevards that you do see. 3. Mumbai has the largest slum in Asia and that’s not the only slum in the city. Besides, every Indian city has plenty of slums, it’s just that we in Mumbai don’t have any places left to hide them away from visitors. This should adequately prepare for you for those sights and smells of Mumbai you would like to run away from. Now we get down to what you can see. There are the usual suspects: Gateway of India, Prince of Wales Museum, Marine Drive, Hanging Gardens, Juhu Beach and Film City (though even I’ve never been to the last mentioned place.) Again, a word of advice for Southies: please, if you’ve seen Marina/Kovalam Beach and expect most beaches to be on the lines of those, don’t visit Juhu Beach or Girgaum Chowpatty. There are some lovely beaches 2 hours towards Delhi/Goa from Mumbai which are unspoilt, beautiful and with very few people. On the other hand, if you want a different experience from any other beaches, you must visit Juhu Beach. In the evening, the beach is 10 times more crowded than all other beaches in the country and bustles with people of all social, economic, linguistic sections of India. Of course, there’s the famed Bhel Puri to savour after an exhausting hour at the beach. On similar lines, if you want to see Mumbai with ease and don’t want to negotiate the crowds, it’s a great option to visit the city on a Sunday morning. The downside of that is that most of the roadside stalls in South Mumbai are either closed on Sunday or open late, so you’ll have to separate shopping from sightseeing. On the other hand, if you want a slice of the Mumbai you’ve seen on TV during the Ganpati Visarjan telecast, you must visit it in the evening when the city lights up in all its 1000-watt splendour with millions of people jostling through the shopping lanes. I don’t know exactly how these Mumbai Darshan trips are organised and how much time they allocate to each spot. But if you want a quick tour through Fort and South Mumbai without any 30-minute halts, you can try BEST bus route no. 108 and 138, both of which depart from the bus stand adjacent to Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus. 108 takes you through Asiatic society library, Regal theatre, Princes of Wales Museum, Flora Fountain, Mantralaya, right inside Nariman Point and then onto the Marine Drive to Malabar Hill. 138 is a bit shorter - from CST via DN Road to Flora Fountain, Churchgate, Marine Drive, Mantralaya, Cuffe Parade and World Trade Centre. 138 is a double-decker bus. So if you sit in the relatively empty upper deck, you can look head-on (well, almost) at the skyscrapers of Nariman Point. A walk along the Marine Drive from Chowpatty to atleast Ambassador Hotel is absolutely recommended. If you embark on this exercise on a Sunday evening, you might get lucky and spot Porsches and BMWs. Mercedes, did you say? Passe, you get one every 15-20 seconds or so on Marine Drive on the better days. Worli Seaface and Bandra Bandstand are also worth visiting, though they don’t really compare with Marine Drive. There are plenty of temples and I will name the most renowned ones: Mahalaxmi, Siddhivinayak and Fanaswadi (Girgaum). The Taraporewala aquarium used to be good, but I hear they’re running out of fish these days. Still, it’s better than the aquariums I’ve visited in Bangalore and Chennai. But the same does not hold for the zoo. I do not recommend visiting it, unless you want to study the miracle of running a zoo in such a congested part of the city first-hand. And those of you who are not from Hyderabad must visit IMAX theatre in Wadala. The tickets don’t come cheap, of course, but it’s a great experience. Of course, you can read the reviews on IMAX in the entertainment section! Mumbai now has a host of malls, supermarkets and department stores which have changed shopping in the city. We still turn to Crawford Market or Kabutar Khana on occasion, but by and large the suburbs have become self-sufficient. Again, there is a separate section for the malls, so I’ll not touch on that here. Let’s sum up everything: Monuments and British architecture: Fort Seafronts and beaches: Marine Drive, Worli Seaface, Bandra Bandstand, Juhu Beach Skyscrapers, actors/businessmen’s houses: Nariman Point, Pedder Road, Warden Road, Juhu-Tara Road Gardens/open spaces:Hanging Gardens, Kamala Nehru Park, the garden near Gateway of India, National Park Temples: Mahalaxmi, Siddhivinayak, Fanaswadi (I’ve heard a lot about Mount Mary Church, but I haven’t been there, so I can’t say anything about it) I hope these little tips help you enjoy your visit to Mumbai.