The pace of work is breathtaking. Straddling an improvised saddle, a man paid by the drum furiously beats aluminium cooking oil containers back into shape. Textile manufacturers fight off buzzing flies as they prepare raw leather hides, and poppadams bake in the streets on the back of overturned baskets before being packaged for sale in supermarkets.

Much of this work is dangerous and dirty, but it is employment and income, a lifeline denied many in this city of 14 million people, where countless numbers survive on the streets.

Reality Tours was co-founded in January 2006 by Englishman Chris Way, who settled in Mumbai after falling in love with the city while backpacking around the world.

Back at Leopold’s next morning, Way, 34, explains how the company redistributes tour profits to the community education centre and kindergarten they have set up in Dharavi.

Before he and co-founder Krishna Pujari launched the tours, Way visited almost every square inch of the slum, determining whether a tour could work.

“What impressed me was the spirit and the enterprise, despite the poverty,” he recalls. “It’s a very subtle difference, but a real difference. Of course there is poverty – open drains, small housing. It’s the way they overcome these problems which impressed me.”

Certainly, Dharavi’s commercial focus is what makes this tour so interesting. Way says few other slums share the district’s vigour. “The sense of spirit you will find in lots of slums, but not the enterprise. That’s what makes Dharavi different.”

Reality Tours ploughs 80 per cent of the tour’s profits into their community centre, after deducting wages. The remaining 20 per cent goes on repaying bank loans and growing the company: they also offer tours of Mumbai’s Crawford Market and overnight tours to villages on the mainland. The company publish annual accounts on their website.

What did Dharavi’s residents think of Slumdog Millionaire? “People were angry with the way they were represented,” says our guide Asif. The derogatory use of dog caused controversy.

Way argues that the film showed slum dwellers in a largely negative light, without any sense of the district’s spirit. “One simple shot of a wedding or religious festival would show that Dharavi is generally a happy place,” he says.

In Mumbai, as in all Indian cities, there is no escaping the poverty. Street kids bed down in gutters outside the five-star Taj Mahal hotel. Beggars are everywhere. But as veteran BBC India correspondent Mark Tully said, “we don’t have to cope with the poverty, the poor do”.

A tour around Dharavi shows that however awful circumstances appear, work, wages and a sense of community can make even the most difficult of lives tolerable.

Need to know

Mumbai slum tour costs 800 rupees (£10.50). No cameras allowed. realitytoursandtravel.com

More 'slum tours' around the world

Rio’s Rocinha favela
Wedged between mountains and the sea, Rio’s slums cling vertiginously to cliffs in the immediate shadow of wealthy barrios. In few places on Earth is the disparity between rich and poor so stark. Brazilian-born Marcelo Armstrong promises favela tours that are beneficial to the community, informative and non-voyeuristic. favelatour.com.br

Johannesburg’s Soweto townships
Soweto is South Africa’s biggest and most vibrant township, and following the 1976 Soweto uprising, was pivotal to black South African’s struggle for freedom during the apartheid era. 16 years after the end of white rule, Soweto remains poor, with the majority of residents living in old matchbox houses. 480 rand, four hours. vhupo-tours.com

Jakata Hidden Tours
“Please wear sturdy shoes or sandals and not your best clothes,” recommends Ronny Poluan, the former actor and film director offering tours of Jakata’s Kampung Pulo slums, where conditions underfoot are the least of the residents’ worries. Here you will discover soy bean cake and tofu factories amidst the filth. A third of your $35 goes to local NGOs. jakartahiddentour.wordpress.com