Taste of India with Monisha Bharadwaj

On arrival in Mumbai, you will be met and taken to your hotel Nariman Point where you will be spending 5 nights. This luxury hotel is perfectly placed to explore the city and you have the afternoon to relax and recover from your journey.

Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) is the commercial hub of India and a vibrant, colourful and bustling metropolis. It is also an important centre of theatre, art, music, dance, and of course, food. As a megapolis, Mumbai is not only a microcosm of Indian food, but different regions of the city also have their own, inherent, and very diverse local food culture. Although steeped in tradition and with a rich historical past, Mumbai is a city where traditional and modern business practices flourish simultaneously.

In the evening you will be introduced to Indian food in an informal talk – covering the vast diversity of Indian food, its various strands, origins and foreign influences. The talk will be followed by a welcome dinner – at an authentic Indian restaurant (Gaylords).

Meals Included: Dinner

After breakfast at the hotel, you will be taken to explore a bit of Mumbai. Your tour will start with a visit to the ‘Gateway of India’, the bold basalt arch of colonial triumph that faces out to Mumbai harbour and continue to the famous Dhobi Ghat (washermen colony), a well-known open-air laundromat, where the washers, locally known as dhobis, work in the open to wash the clothes from Mumbai's hotels and hospitals. Afterwards, visit the busy Crawford Market and get a feel of the local fruit and vegetable market – you will be amazed by the variety of products sold here.

End your morning excursion with a little walk around one of the oldest parts of the city - the historic district of Kala Ghoda with its many Gothic buildings and numerous art galleries. The walk will end at Leopold Café – a very Mumbai local joint – for a light lunch.

After lunch, you will be taken to your hotel and have the afternoon to relax.

Early in the evening, you will be taken to Chowpatty Beach to see the street food stalls and learn about the unique culture of outdoor eating. Dinner tonight will be a specially curated, private, Mumbai street-food feast at one of the city’s most popular restaurants - Chetana.

Meals included: Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

This morning you would be taken on a day trip to Elephanta Caves. Accessible only by motor launch, Elephanta (closed on Mondays) is a small island that rises near its centre into two conical hills. The excavations for which Elephanta is so celebrated are situated about two-thirds up the higher of the two hills. These Rock Temples, marked by a large number of beautifully carved sculptures of Hindu gods and goddesses, were hewn out of the hill sometime in the eighth century. The exterior of the main cave consists of a columned verandah, 30 feet wide and six feet deep, approached by steps flanked by sculptured elephants.

In the evening, there will be a talk about the Islamic influence on Indian food and the history of biryani, a much-loved dish the world over. The talk will be followed by a kebab and biryani dinner at Jaffer Bhai’s Delhi Darbar.

Meals Included: Breakfast, Dinner

This morning you will be taken to visit the Banganga Tank and the nearby Hindu temple. According to a local legend, Rama, the exiled hero of the epic Ramayana, stopped at the spot in search of his kidnapped wife, Sita. Feeling thirsty, Rama asked his brother, Lakshmana, to bring him some water, and Lakshmana shot an arrow into the ground, and water gushed out – hence the name Bana (arrow), Ganga (the Ganges or a body of water). Continue to a local Jain temple and learn about their unique religion, which professes extreme non-violence and has their own variety of vegetarian food.

The morning’s visit is a great setting for a talk on the history of vegetarianism in India and Jain food. Fittingly, the lunch will be a vegetarian ‘Gujarati Thali’ at one of Mumbai’s best Gujarati cuisine restaurants - Shree Thaker Bhojanalaya.

Return to your hotel for a leisurely afternoon. Tonight you will be taken for a European (colonial-inspired) dinner at a private, members-only club – The Malabar Hill Club.

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Early this morning you will be taken to explore ‘Mumbai at Dawn'. Watch hundreds of newspaper vendors sorting out papers in multiple languages; auctioneers frantically gabble fish prices, and organised chaos breaks out with the arrival of over 100 tonnes of vegetables, fruits and meat at the markets. The scenes in wee hours truly define the mercurial character of Mumbai; and best of all, as you walk the same lanes a few hours later, you find no evidence of the morning’s hustle. The early morning tour will end with tea and snacks at a local tea shop.

Return to your hotel in time for breakfast and be at leisure for the rest of the forenoon. Later in the afternoon, you will be taken to visit the Royal Opera House (perhaps the only surviving Opera House in India) and the National Centre for Performing Arts (a cultural centre, which aims to promote and preserve India's heritage of music, dance, theatre, film, literature, and photography).

Early in the evening, you will meet an internationally celebrated author to talk about, the very unique to Mumbai, Parsi culture and their food. The talk will be followed by a Parsi Wedding Feast dinner at the famed Jimmy Boy restaurant.

Meals Included: Breakfast, Dinner

After checking out from your hotel this morning (by 1100hrs), your cuisine tour ends and you will either continue onto an add-on trip such as the golden triangle or Kerela, or head home.