🇮🇳 India
Delhi
Old lanes, new appetites.
One city here can feel like a completely different country from the next. Delhi was our loud, generous, overwhelming introduction to India.
Field notes
India was amazing, and honestly, I need to go back there soon to explore more cities since one city from a state can feel like a completely different country compared to another. The diversity is immense, and the cuisine is unmatchable.
As we traveled from Delhi to Agra and then back to Delhi, we took the train, and we experienced local areas, like Connaught Place in Delhi. I can't comprehend how people are able to balance 3 whole luggages twice their size on top of their heads when they're traveling via train. I saw some crazy stuff: my friend wanted to take us to the banks of the Ganges river for sunset photos, but he directed our rickshaw driver to a random, sketchy place. As we got out of the rickshaw, all I saw was a halo of mosquitoes over his head, and a bunch of dudes hanging out in a dump truck in front of us. I high tailed our asses out of that area fast. I also saw a rickshaw driver have his lunch stolen behind him by a monkey and then him getting into a fight with said monkey (he picked up a stick and chased it).
India is the land of extremes. Extreme wealth, extreme pollution, extreme traffic, extreme noise, extreme poverty, extreme beauty. I loved it there, telling people I'm from East Assam so they wouldn't bother me. I can't wait to be back.
Before you go
How to respect the local culture
- Cover shoulders and knees and expect to lose your shoes constantly; temples, tombs and homes all run the same script, and bare shoulders or shorts will get you turned away at religious sites.
- Gurdwaras like Bangla Sahib lend free head scarves at the entrance, so take one; Akshardham bans every electronic including your phone, and showing up unprepared means a locker queue.
- Eat, pay and hand things over with your right hand; the left is traditionally the bathroom hand, and nobody will lecture a foreigner, but locals notice.
- Ask before pointing a camera at people, especially women in the Old Delhi lanes; strangers will ask for selfies with you too, and yes or no are both fine answers.
- Bargain in Chandni Chowk because it is the expected script, skip it in fixed-price shops, and never grind a cycle-rickshaw driver over ten rupees.
Taste
🍜 Top 5 Eats
Gulati Restaurant in Pandara Road Market
It earned the top spot. Gulati started as a dhaba in 1959, and the white-tablecloth version still cooks like it has something to prove: butter chicken, dal makhani, and a garlic naan to mop up every last bit. The weekend queue is part of the meal.
Any street chai
If you get a stomach ache later you can blame me, but you won't regret it. The real thing is boiled hard with milk, ginger and cardamom, poured short and strong, sometimes into a kulhad, an unglazed clay cup that adds an earthy note and traditionally gets smashed when you're done. Pick the busiest stall you can find: high turnover means the chai never sits, which is most of the food-safety math right there.
Book thisAny McDonald's
No, I'm not joking. The paneer burgers were actually good. I was doubtful too when my friend first bought it. Then I tried it and was like: wtf, it's good…
Andhra Bhavan Canteen
The Andhra Pradesh state house runs a canteen a short hop from Connaught Place, and it's where Delhiites take out-of-towners to prove a point about value. You sit down, an unlimited thali appears, and men with buckets keep refilling your plate until you physically cover it with your hands. Surrender early.
Devan's South Indian Coffee & Tea, Lodhi Colony
A family roaster that's been working the same Khanna Market lane since 1962, and the whole lane smells like it. Grab a filter coffee or a flat white, buy a bag of their beans to take home, then walk it all off in Lodi Gardens ten minutes away.
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Do
🎟️ Top 5 Local Experiences
Humayun's Tomb
Red sandstone, white marble, and the blueprint the Taj learned from. Commissioned in the 1550s by Humayun's widow and built by a Persian architect, it was the first grand Mughal garden-tomb on the subcontinent, UNESCO-listed and set in a four-quadrant charbagh paradise garden split by water channels. Sunder Nursery, further down this list, sits right against the complex.
Humayun's Tomb, the Taj before the Taj. Lodi Gardens
One of my favorite spots. Constructed in 1490 CE, the Lodi Gardens was one of the most beautiful walks we experienced. It's a free public park of about ninety acres, with Sayyid and Lodi dynasty tombs from the mid-15th through early 16th centuries scattered casually across it. Delhi treats it as home turf: morning walkers, joggers, yoga groups and picnickers going about their day among the monuments, which is exactly the right way to use 500-year-old architecture.
Lodi Gardens, a 500-year-old reason to slow down. Lotus Temple
A giant marble lotus that's actually a Bahá'í house of worship, and the quietest room in Delhi. After the honking outside, the silence inside feels like a glitch.
Walking around Khan Market
In case you want a more elevated, Western experience. The U-shaped double-storey block went up in 1951 as a rehabilitation project for Partition refugees, and it's now regularly ranked India's most expensive retail street, which is quite the character arc. Bahrisons Booksellers, founded by one of those refugees in the fifties, is still the anchor institution and the stop worth making.
Sunder Nursery
Ninety acres of restored Mughal garden that Delhi has adopted as its picnic living room: this is where locals go when they're tired of every other park. Bring snacks, spread out on a lawn, and collect the bonus Mughal tombs and peacocks as you wander. It shares a wall with Humayun's Tomb, so one trip covers both.
Frame
📸 Top 5 Places for Photos
All 5 spots on one map
- Humayun's Tomb at opening time
- Agrasen ki Baoli
- Lodi Gardens at golden hour · facing W
- India Gate after dark
- Jama Masjid's southern minaret
Loads an interactive map from OpenFreeMap. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Humayun's Tomb at opening time
Get there when the gates open and the red sandstone does its sunrise glow with nobody else in your frame. Shoot straight down the central watercourse for the symmetry, then let the arched side chambers frame the dome.
Open in Maps Approximate, within a blockstraight down the central watercourse, where the symmetry does the work, then let the arched side chambers frame the dome
Agrasen ki Baoli
A 14th-century stepwell hiding between office towers just off Connaught Place: 103 steps of repeating stone arches sinking into the ground. Go early morning, shoot from the top step down the well's throat, and wait for the pigeons to do their thing.
Open in Maps Exact vantage pointfrom the top step, straight down the well's throat, early enough that the pigeons are the only company
Lodi Gardens at golden hour
Put the low sun behind the Bara Gumbad dome and the silhouette shot is free; our own photo above is the proof. Mornings are walkers and parakeets; late afternoon is when the 500-year-old stone goes warm.
Open in Maps Neighborhood pin, not an exact spotFacing W: west with the low sun behind the Bara Gumbad dome, which hands you the silhouette for free
India Gate after dark
This one is a night shot, full stop. It's floodlit, on national occasions it wears the tricolour, and the balloon sellers and ice-cream carts hand you foreground life for free. The lawns are wide enough to back way up for a clean centered frame.
Open in Maps Approximate, within a blockback up across the wide lawns for a clean centred frame once it is floodlit
Jama Masjid's southern minaret
They'll charge you a camera fee even if your camera is a phone. Pay it, then pay the small extra to climb the southern minaret, because Old Delhi from above finally explains Old Delhi at street level. Dress modestly, plan around prayer times, and note the posted rules don't allow unaccompanied women up the minaret.
Open in Maps Approximate, within a blockout over Old Delhi from the top of the southern minaret, which is what finally explains the street below
Sleep
🛏️ Where to stay
The Claridges, Lutyens' Delhi
A heritage independent running since 1955 in Lutyens' Delhi, with Lodi Gardens under a mile away and Khan Market and Pandara Road in immediate range. Nearly everything this page recommends, Gulati included, is a walk or a few minutes from the door, and in a city of extreme traffic that is the whole game.
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Or browse what else is nearby:
Outtakes
📷 From the camera roll
Been to Delhi? We probably got something wrong.
That's the point: these lists improve one error at a time.
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