Tour packages from Mumbai: the ghats, the caves and the coast

The directions

Three roads out of the city

East is the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, which climbs the Bhor ghat in about two hours to Lonavala and reaches Pune in three. It is the busiest intercity corridor in the country and also the best-engineered, and it puts the second-century Karla and Bhaja rock-cut caves within a morning of the city.

North-east is the Deccan: about 335 kilometres to Aurangabad, and from there the Ellora and Ajanta caves. These are, by most measures, the most extraordinary rock-cut monuments in the world, and they get a fraction of the visitors that lesser sites do. It is a seven-hour drive each way, which is why it needs five days rather than three.

South is the Konkan coast and Goa, about 590 kilometres. That is a long day by road and most travellers fly it — but the drive through the coastal ghats is genuinely good, and a circuit that runs down by road and flies back is a common request. The Mumbai chauffeur page covers the city end and the two airports.

The arrival deserves a note because Mumbai now has two airports. Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj at Sahar handles most traffic across T1 and T2, and Navi Mumbai International opened on the mainland side of the harbour in December 2025. They are on opposite sides of a very congested city, and a transfer booked against the wrong one starts the trip badly. The desk checks the airport code on your flight number before quoting rather than assuming.

The second consideration is when you leave the city. Mumbai’s outbound traffic towards the Expressway is heavy from about half past eight until eleven, and a circuit that departs at nine loses most of an hour to it. Every itinerary here is written to leave early or after the peak, and the coordinator sets the actual time once your hotel is known — the difference between Bandra and Colaba is another thirty minutes on the same leg.

Before you go

What Mumbai itself is worth before the road starts

Mumbai is the one circuit base on this site that genuinely competes with the circuit. South Mumbai’s Victorian Gothic and Art Deco ensemble was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2018 — the second-largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the world after Miami — and it is best seen on foot between Oval Maidan and Marine Drive, with the car meeting you at the far end.

The half day everybody should take is the Elephanta boat from the Gateway of India: an hour each way across the harbour to sixth-century Shiva caves cut into an island, with the six-metre Trimurti in the main hall. The ferries do not run in the monsoon and the last return is mid-afternoon, so it is a morning rather than an afternoon.

The other Mumbai worth seeing is the working one. Dhobi Ghat, the open-air laundry, is visible from the Mahalaxmi bridge; the dabbawalas deliver something like two hundred thousand lunches a day out of Churchgate station around midday; and Crawford Market and the Bhuleshwar lanes behind it are a genuine bazaar rather than a restored one.

A day covers most of it, and it fits before the first driving leg rather than costing a charter day. The Mumbai chauffeur page prices a city day, and the Mumbai guide covers the districts, the two airports and the traffic patterns that decide when to leave.