Nature trails and safaris in Mumbai

The park in Borivali is the largest piece of nature in the city, and it is a real forest: a camera-trap census counted 54 leopards across the park, Aarey and Tungareshwar, and the Indian giant squirrel, Maharashtra's state animal, lives in the canopy and is most active at dawn. The park's page has the visit details.

The safari. What people call the safari near Mumbai is the park's Tiger & Lion Safari: a bus ride through the enclosures holding the park's only lions and tigers. It runs from about 9:30 to 17:30 every day except Monday, for about ₹124 for adults and ₹50 for children aged 3–12. The same area has boating on the Dahisar river, a buggy tour and the Gandhi Tekdi hill walk.

The trails. The park publishes a set of nature trails, booked through its Nature Information Centre: the gentle Shilonda trail with forest streams, the Malad trail along the western edge, the shaded Kanheri upper trail to the top of the caves, the long Bamboo Hut / Gaumukh trail, a favourite with birders, and the highest point trail, with a view of Tulsi, Vihar and Powai lakes.

Kanheri Caves. More than a hundred Buddhist caves cut into one basalt hill inside the park, worked from the 1st century BCE; see Kanheri Caves.

Everything in the tourism zone except Gandhi Tekdi and Kanheri closes on Mondays and for lunch, from about 13:30 to 14:30.

Thane Creek Flamingo Sanctuary covers roughly 1,690 hectares of mangrove and water between the Airoli and Vashi bridges, and is Mumbai's first Ramsar site. A Bombay Natural History Society count once recorded more than 130,000 flamingos across the creek, most of them lesser flamingos that breed in the Rann of Kutch. The mangroves, protected as forest by court order, are what give the birds shallow, food-rich mud to feed on.

The boats are run by the Mangrove Cell of the Maharashtra Forest Department from its Coastal and Marine Biodiversity Centre at Airoli, not by private operators. The season runs roughly from October to May; flamingo numbers peak between January and May, with March and April the fullest. Departures follow the tide and change daily, and slots fill, so book about a week ahead. The fare is in the card above.

There is no shade on the water: take a hat and water, and binoculars if you have them. Boarding is from a jetty with steps, and life jackets are compulsory. More on the sanctuary page and in birds of Mumbai.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's elevated walkway runs through the last patch of forest on Malabar Hill, between Kamala Nehru Park and the Doongerwadi woods. Inspired by Singapore's Tree Top Walk, it is a raised wooden deck 485 metres long and 2.4 metres wide, at canopy height, with a glass-floored section and a view out towards the Arabian Sea and Girgaon Chowpatty.

It is open from 5:00 to 20:00 in one-hour slots, and entry costs about ₹25 for Indian citizens and ₹100 for foreign nationals. Booking is online only, on the BMC's nature trail site or through its WhatsApp booking, and a ticket is needed for every age. Only phone photography is allowed. Mornings are the quiet ones. Kamala Nehru Park and the Hanging Gardens, with their view over Marine Drive, are on the same crest of the hill.

The Bombay Natural History Society, founded in 1883 and still based at Hornbill House in the Fort, runs public walks led by working naturalists: intertidal life on the rocks of a Mumbai beach, heritage trees on a south Mumbai street, frogs in a monsoon forest. Its Conservation Education Centre sits on a nature reserve between Sanjay Gandhi National Park and Film City in Goregaon.

Walks run through the year on announced dates: shore walks around the lowest tides, monsoon walks in July, flamingo walks between February and May. Register by email in advance, as popular walks fill.

Each trip has its own season.