100 Best Things to Do in Delhi: Fun Spots and Hidden Gems

Chandni Chowk beat me comprehensively on my first morning in Delhi. I got lost, overpaid a cycle rickshaw by a factor of about four, ate a kachori from a man whose family had been frying them on that corner since well before I was born, and understood almost none of it. Plenty of return trips later the confusion has not really lifted, and I have slowly come round to thinking that is the point rather than the problem.

You cannot tick this city off. There are at least seven Delhis stacked on top of one another, and the quality that makes it infuriating over a weekend, its flat refusal to sit still or summarise itself, is the same quality that makes it the most rewarding week you can spend in India. Some things to do in Delhi have been happening in the same lane for four centuries. Others opened last spring. Most lists cannot work out which of those they are interested in.

What follows is a hundred of them, covering monuments and forgotten ruins, the street food crawl that is actually worth doing, markets, gardens, a handful of genuinely peculiar afternoons, and the hidden gems in Delhi that residents will tell you about slightly reluctantly. Fees and timings appear where they help, though Indian monuments revise their prices more often than they announce it, so read every number here as a firm indication rather than a guarantee.

Things to do in Delhi: how to actually use this list

Nobody is doing a hundred things in one trip, and trying would be a fairly wretched way to experience a city where a decent proportion of the pleasure involves sitting still somewhere with a cup of tea while the afternoon goes past you. Everything below is grouped by geography and by mood instead, so you can pull out whole sections depending on how long you have got and what sort of day you are after.

Three Delhis, broadly. The walled Mughal city around Chandni Chowk, which people call Old Delhi, is dense and deafening and serves the best food in the country. New Delhi, meaning the wide colonial grid Lutyens drew, holds the big institutions and the gardens. South and west of all that is where the oldest ruins sit, along with most of the nightlife and very nearly everything I would describe as a hidden gem in Delhi.

Two days? One in Old Delhi, one in the south. A third day buys you Lutyens’ Delhi and a museum. Past four days you can start on the strange stuff, which is where this city gets properly interesting. Suggested itineraries are near the bottom if you would rather have it spelled out.

One thing to sort before anything else: the Delhi Metro will do most of your travelling, fares run ₹11 to ₹64, and it is cleaner and considerably faster than whatever is happening on the road above it.

Old Delhi: the Mughal core and the best things to do in Delhi

Shah Jahan started building Shahjahanabad in the 1640s and a surprising amount of it is still doing roughly the job it was designed for, which is not something you can say about many planned cities. Go early. By noon the lanes stop being charming and start being a physical problem, whereas at eight in the morning the sandstone takes the light beautifully and you can actually hear yourself.

Inside the walls: the unmissable five

1. Start at the Red Fort, obviously, although it takes a while to register how big it was because the British knocked down a great deal of what stood inside. The walk through Lahori Gate into the covered Chatta Chowk bazaar and out to the Diwan-i-Aam is the route to take. Indian entry sits around ₹50, foreign visitors pay in the region of ₹600, and it is open from sunrise until roughly 9pm.
2. Ten years after the fort, the same emperor finished Jama Masjid, which still holds twenty-five thousand people in its courtyard and is still the largest mosque in India. The mosque is free; you pay for a camera and a little more to climb the southern minaret, and that climb buys you the only view that makes the layout of Old Delhi make any sense at all.
3. Everything funnels into Chandni Chowk. Pedestrianising it has made walking the street dramatically less dangerous than it was a decade ago. Do not shop here unless you want forty kilos of something wholesale; the street itself is the thing.
4. I am separating Chatta Chowk out from the fort because people march through it without looking up, and it happens to be a genuine covered bazaar from the 1600s, one of the earliest in the country.
5. The ninth Sikh Guru was executed in 1675 on the spot now occupied by Gurudwara Sis Ganj Sahib. It costs nothing, stays open at any hour of the day or night, and provided you cover your head and leave your shoes at the counter the volunteers will quietly take care of you without making any kind of fuss about it.

Deeper into the walled city

6. Walk fifteen minutes west, past the tourist end of the street, and you reach Fatehpuri Masjid, built by one of Shah Jahan’s wives and almost entirely ignored because of that fifteen minutes. It is calm in a way Jama Masjid never manages.
7. Just beyond it is Khari Baoli, the largest wholesale spice market in Asia and the single most physically assaulting place on this entire list. You will start coughing from the chilli dust hanging in the air inside about two minutes, and the time to be there is mid-morning, while the sacks are still being hauled off the carts and the whole lane smells of cardamom and dried red chilli at once.
8. Tucked into the Gali Guliyan lanes, Haveli Dharampura is an eighteenth-century mansion someone spent years restoring, now running as a boutique hotel. Book dinner on the courtyard terrace and you get to see what these houses looked like before the neighbourhood closed over them.
9. A plain black marble platform is all there is at Raj Ghat, marking where Gandhi was cremated, and the restraint is precisely why it works. There is no charge, and the lawns spreading out around it make a good place to sit and recover after a morning spent in the lanes.
10. Four of Shahjahanabad’s city gates survive, stranded in traffic: Delhi Gate, Ajmeri Gate, Turkman Gate and Kashmere Gate. Tracking all four of them down amounts to a fairly flimsy excuse for a half-day walk through neighbourhoods you would never otherwise enter, which in a city like this is often exactly the kind of excuse you want.

Lutyens’ Delhi: the imperial capital and its wide empty avenues

In 1911 the British moved the capital down from Calcutta, handed Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker a stretch of scrub, and told them to build what an empire thought it looked like. The result is better than it has any right to be and bears no relation whatever to the city around it: sandstone, sightlines, roundabouts the size of small parks. Bring a car or a very committed pair of legs, because the distances out here lie to you on a map in a way they do not anywhere else in the city.

Raisina Hill and the ceremonial axis

11. Larger than Versailles, Rashtrapati Bhavan is where the Viceroy lived and the President now does, and it is the most impressive building in Delhi by a comfortable margin. Getting inside means a pre-booked guided tour on selected days with ID checks, so arrange it a week out rather than hoping.
12. Behind it are the Mughal Gardens, renamed Amrit Udyan, which open to the public for a short window each spring. Entry is free, although you have to register online beforehand and the slots go quickly, so if your dates happen to land in February or March it is worth rearranging a day or two around whenever the garden is open.
13. Over thirteen thousand names are inscribed on India Gate at the eastern end of Kartavya Path. Go after dark, when the whole stretch fills up with families and ice cream sellers and the thing stops being a monument and becomes a park.
14. Kartavya Path itself was redeveloped in 2022, and walking it from India Gate up to Raisina Hill as the sun goes down is about the simplest good evening Delhi offers.
15. A little east sits the National War Memorial, for soldiers lost since independence. Free, quietly handled, and the evening retreat ceremony is worth timing your walk around.

Around Connaught Place

16. Laid out as concentric white Georgian colonnades, Connaught Place is still the commercial heart and still baffling, because the inner, middle and outer circles are visually identical and you will walk the wrong one twice. The sensible approach is to use the arcades for shade and treat the radial lanes running off them as where the shops actually worth finding have quietly ended up.
17. Maharaja Jai Singh II built Jantar Mantar in the eighteenth century to measure time and track stars, and the enormous masonry instruments now read as accidental abstract sculpture. Entry comes to around ₹20 for Indians and ₹250 for foreign visitors, and half an hour is about as long as you will want to spend there.
18. Sixty steps drop into the ground at Agrasen ki Baoli, a few minutes from Connaught Place. Free, badly overrun at weekends because of how it photographs, and genuinely eerie at the bottom where the traffic noise cuts out entirely.
19. The kitchen at Gurudwara Bangla Sahib feeds tens of thousands of people every day and charges none of them. There is a gold dome and a large tank as well, but volunteering in the langar for an hour will do more for you than most ticketed attractions in this city.
20. Continuous chanting has been running at Hanuman Mandir on Baba Kharak Singh Marg since 1964, which the record books have duly noted, and the bangle sellers and mehndi artists working the pavement outside are reason enough to hang around.

The ancient cities: Delhi’s oldest ruins and best places to visit

Several Delhis had already been built, sacked and walked away from before the Mughals turned up, and the remains are scattered across the southern ridge. This is where the city gets seriously old. It is also, because these sites are spread out and awkward for the metro, where you can find yourself more or less alone on a Tuesday morning. Once you have done the famous things once, these are the best places to visit in Delhi.

Mehrauli and the first city

21. Work on Qutub Minar began in 1192, which makes it comfortably the oldest thing on this list, and at seventy-three metres it is still the tallest brick minaret anywhere. Indian entry runs around ₹40 to ₹50 and foreign visitors pay roughly ₹600. It opens near 7am and that is when you want to be at the gate.
22. Standing in the same complex is the Iron Pillar, about sixteen hundred years old and barely rusted. Metallurgists have spent the best part of a century explaining exactly why it has not corroded, while visitors have spent the same century standing in front of it finding the whole thing mildly unsettling.
23. Around the minaret sprawls Mehrauli Archaeological Park, a hundred-odd monuments loose among scrub and trees, free to wander and almost entirely ignored. Balban’s Tomb, Jamali Kamali and the Rajon ki Baoli are all somewhere in there.
24. Built in the 1560s, Humayun’s Tomb was the prototype the Taj Mahal came from, and I would argue it is the better building to actually visit because you can circle it without somebody pressed against your back. Around ₹40 to ₹50 for Indians, ₹600 for foreign visitors.
25. Opened in July 2024 alongside it, the Humayun’s Tomb museum is sunk into the ground and holds more than seven hundred artefacts, with a 270-degree screen running five centuries of the site’s history. Nothing else added to the cultural life of this city in the last several years comes anywhere close to it.

Forts, tombs and the ruins most visitors skip

26. Humayun and Sher Shah Suri fought over the ground Purana Qila stands on, and it now comes with a boating lake, excavations reaching back to the painted grey ware period and an evening sound and light show. Expect something around ₹20 if you are Indian and ₹250 if you are not.
27. Nothing in Delhi is as atmospheric as Tughlaqabad Fort: six kilometres of collapsing rubble walls thrown up in the 1320s and abandoned almost at once. It is overgrown, very thinly staffed and faintly post-apocalyptic in a way that is thrilling for about an hour, so take company with you, wear shoes you can actually climb in, and make sure you are not still up there at dusk.
28. A thirteenth-century reservoir, a madrasa, a tomb and a deer park make up the Hauz Khas complex, and the whole lot backs directly onto a neighbourhood of bars. There is no entry fee, and the sunset over the water genuinely does earn the crowd it pulls in every evening.
29. The last of the great Mughal garden tombs went up in 1754. Safdarjung’s Tomb is a slightly overblown echo of Humayun’s and it is nearly always empty. Tickets are in the region of ₹20 for Indian visitors and ₹250 for everyone else.
30. Scattered through what is now the pleasantest park in central Delhi, the Lodhi Garden tombs are fifteenth-century Sayyid and Lodhi structures, free to walk among, and by seven in the morning surrounded by joggers and extremely loud parakeets.
31. Buried inside modern south Delhi, Siri Fort and Khirki Masjid are the most overlooked relics of the Khilji and Tughlaq periods, and simply locating them counts as a small adventure.

Temples, mosques, churches and gurudwaras worth your time

Delhi is one of the more religiously layered cities anywhere, and the striking thing is how unremarkable that is to anyone living here. You can see a Mughal mosque, a Baha’i temple, a Jain bird hospital and a Sufi shrine in an afternoon and nobody will find it odd. Most of these are free; nearly all of them want your shoes off and your head covered.

32. Akshardham is enormous, carved from pink sandstone and white marble, finished in 2005 and completely over the top in the most enjoyable way. The temple itself is free; the exhibitions, boat ride and musical fountain are ticketed. Leave your phone, camera and bags at the hotel because security will not let any of it past the gate and the cloakroom queue is long.
33. The Lotus Temple, the Baha’i house of worship shaped like a half-open flower, is free, silent inside by rule, and one of the most visited buildings on earth. Closed Mondays.
34. Nizamuddin Dargah is the shrine of the fourteenth-century Sufi saint, buried in a warren of lanes near Humayun’s Tomb, and the Thursday evening qawwali is the single most atmospheric hour available in Delhi. Free, crowded, and you should go with someone who knows the way in.
35. Chhatarpur Temple is among the largest temple complexes in India, built in white marble and south Indian style, and almost entirely visited by locals rather than tourists.
36. ISKCON Temple in East of Kailash is calm, free, and does a decent vegetarian meal downstairs.

The quieter religious corners

37. Jain Bird Hospital opposite the Red Fort treats thousands of injured birds a year and has done since 1956, charges nothing, and is one of the genuinely strange and lovely hidden gems in Delhi.
38. Cathedral Church of the Redemption in Lutyens’ Delhi is a Herbert Baker building from the 1930s, almost always empty, and cool and quiet in a way few buildings in this city manage in May.
39. Jamali Kamali Mosque in Mehrauli has painted ceilings from the 1520s that survive better than they have any right to, and a reputation for being haunted that the caretakers will happily feed.
40. Sunehri Masjid near Chandni Chowk is small, gilded and attached to a nasty bit of history involving Nadir Shah ordering a massacre from its roof in 1739, which the plaque does not dwell on.
41. Kalkaji Mandir near the Lotus Temple is one of Delhi’s oldest continuously worshipped sites, chaotic during Navratri and quietly absorbing the rest of the year.

Delhi’s museums and galleries

Delhi’s museums are uneven. A few are world class, several are frozen somewhere around 1987 with handwritten labels and flickering strip lights, and one or two are so specific that they become fascinating by accident. Most close on Mondays, most are cheap, and nearly all are air conditioned, which in May is an argument on its own.

42. The National Museum on Janpath holds everything from Harappan seals to Mughal miniatures and the relics of the Buddha, and it remains open while plans advance to move the collection to the new Yuge Yugeen Bharat museum in the Central Vista, whose first gallery is expected by late 2026. Worth checking before you go.
43. The National Gallery of Modern Art in Jaipur House covers Indian art from the 1850s onwards, and the Amrita Sher-Gil collection alone justifies the ticket.
44. The National Rail Museum in Chanakyapuri has a genuinely excellent outdoor collection of steam locomotives and royal saloons, a toy train that runs around the site, and is the best thing in Delhi to do with children.
45. Sulabh International Museum of Toilets is exactly what it says, free, slightly out of the way in Mahavir Enclave, and the most frequently recommended of the unusual things to do in Delhi for good reason. It is also a serious museum about sanitation.
46. The Crafts Museum near Purana Qila keeps a permanent village of regional architecture alongside textiles and terracotta, with artisans often working on site.

Smaller collections and galleries

47. Gandhi Smriti on Tees January Marg is the house where Gandhi spent his last 144 days and was shot in the garden. Free, and the preserved room is more affecting than you expect.
48. The Partition Museum at Dara Shikoh Library Building near Kashmere Gate opened in 2023 and documents 1947 through oral histories and objects. It is harrowing and very well done.
49. Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Saket holds one of the strongest private modern and contemporary Indian collections, and entry is free.
50. The Indian Air Force Museum at Palam has aircraft you can walk around, including captured hardware, and barely any visitors.
51. Shankar’s International Dolls Museum holds several thousand dolls from across the world in a slightly faded 1960s setting, which is either charming or unnerving depending on the hour.
52. The National Science Centre near Purana Qila is hands-on, aimed at children and entirely unembarrassed about it.

Street food in Old Delhi: the crawl that actually matters

This is the reason a lot of people come, and it is worth saying plainly that Old Delhi street food is among the best eating anywhere in the world at any price. Go hungry, go with cash in small notes, drink only bottled or packaged water, and eat where there is a queue of locals rather than where the sign is in English. Start at Chawri Bazaar metro around nine in the morning and work east.

53. Paranthe Wali Gali is a lane off Chandni Chowk where a handful of families have been frying stuffed parathas since the 1870s. Order the rabri or the mixed vegetable, eat it with the pickles and the mint chutney, and accept that it is heavy.
54. Karim’s behind Jama Masjid has been running since 1913, claims descent from Mughal court cooks, and the mutton burra and nihari are the orders. It is not a secret and does not need to be.
55. Natraj Dahi Bhalla on Chandni Chowk does two things, dahi bhalla and aloo tikki, and does them better than anywhere.
56. Jalebi Wala at Dariba Corner has been frying jalebis in desi ghee since 1884. They are enormous and worth the sugar headache.
57. Kuremal Mohan Lal Kulfiwale in Sitaram Bazaar stuffs whole fruit with kulfi and freezes it. The pomegranate one is the reason to detour.
58. Ashok Chaat Corner near Fatehpuri does the best kachori and palak chaat in the walled city, which is a competitive category.

More of the walled city’s kitchens

59. Al Jawahar sits next door to Karim’s and a sizeable number of Delhi people will tell you quietly that the korma is better. Try both and pick a side.
60. Lotan Chole Wale near Chawri Bazaar serves one dish, chole kulche, from a cart, and has done for over a century.
61. Giani Di Hatti on Fatehpuri Chowk makes the rabri falooda that people cross the city for.
62. Chaina Ram near Fatehpuri is a Sindhi sweet shop famous for Karachi halwa, and it survives on reputation rather than signage.
63. Shyam Sweets in Chawri Bazaar does bedmi aloo and nagori halwa, which is the correct Delhi breakfast and almost never eaten by visitors.
64. A guided food walk is, I think, the right call if it is your first time, because the lanes are confusing and half the good stalls have no name on them. Browse food tours and walking tours to see what format suits you.

Eating well across the rest of Delhi

Old Delhi gets the attention, but the city south of it has been quietly running one of Asia’s more serious restaurant scenes for a decade now, and there are a couple of institutions outside the walled city that belong on any list of fun things to do in Delhi simply because eating at them is an event.

65. Moti Mahal in Daryaganj is where butter chicken and dal makhani were invented in the late 1940s by Punjabi refugees improvising with leftover tandoori chicken. The food is fine rather than transcendent; you go for the lineage.
66. Bukhara at ITC Maurya has been serving the same north-west frontier menu for fifty years, the dal takes eighteen hours, and you will need to book well ahead and dress for it.
67. Indian Accent is the fine dining answer, reinterpreting Indian food with a lot of wit, and reservations open weeks in advance.
68. Sarvana Bhavan or Naivedyam for south Indian, because Delhi does a surprisingly good dosa and almost nobody writes about it.
69. Majnu ka Tilla is the Tibetan colony in north Delhi, full of momo and thukpa places, monasteries and cheap guesthouses, and it feels like a different city entirely.
70. Khan Market and Lodhi Colony between them hold most of the cafés worth sitting in for two hours, which after a morning in Old Delhi is an underrated activity.

Markets and shopping: from wholesale chaos to Dilli Haat

Delhi shopping splits into markets where everything costs four hundred rupees and markets where nothing has a price tag at all. Bargain in the first kind, expect fixed prices in the government emporia, and in both cases go in the morning before the heat and the crowds make the whole thing feel like a contact sport.

71. Dilli Haat at INA is a permanent craft market where stalls rotate between states every fortnight, so the stock genuinely changes. There is a small entry fee, the food court does regional dishes properly, and it is the easiest place to buy decent handicrafts without haggling.
72. Sarojini Nagar is the export surplus market, where clothes destined for western high streets end up at a tenth of the price, and the trick is patience and a willingness to dig.
73. Janpath near Connaught Place does Tibetan jewellery, mirror work from Gujarat and cheap clothes, and the hard sell is relentless but good-natured.
74. Chandni Chowk’s specialist lanes each sell one thing: Dariba Kalan for silver, Kinari Bazaar for wedding trim, Nai Sarak for books, Bhagirath Palace for electrical goods and lighting.
75. Khan Market is the expensive one, full of bookshops, delis and boutiques, and reputedly among the priciest retail rents in the world.
76. Central Cottage Industries Emporium on Janpath is government-run, fixed price, and the safe option if you want quality crafts and no negotiation.

Markets for the specific obsession

77. Daryaganj Sunday Book Market, now relocated to Mahila Haat, puts tens of thousands of secondhand books on the pavement every Sunday and is heaven if you have the patience to sift.
78. Nehru Place is Asia’s largest computer market, chaotic, and the place to get any device on earth repaired for very little money.
79. Lajpat Nagar Central Market is where Delhi actually shops for clothes and household goods, and the mehndi stalls on the edges are excellent.
80. Paharganj is the backpacker bazaar opposite New Delhi railway station, grubby and lively, good for cheap textiles and terrible for peace and quiet.
81. Meena Bazaar beside Jama Masjid sells prayer caps, attar and kebabs in roughly equal measure.

Parks, gardens and green Delhi

For a city with the air quality Delhi has in winter, it is startlingly green, and the parks are not an afterthought but genuinely central to how people live here. Mornings belong to walkers and yoga groups, evenings to families, and in between they are mostly empty.

82. Lodhi Garden is ninety acres of lawns, fifteenth-century tombs and very large trees in the middle of the diplomatic quarter, free, open from sunrise, and the best place in Delhi to do nothing at all.
83. Sunder Nursery next to Humayun’s Tomb was restored by the Aga Khan Trust and reopened as a heritage park with Mughal monuments, formal gardens and a lake. There is a modest entry fee and it is worth every rupee.
84. The Garden of Five Senses in Saidul Ajaib is landscaped around sculpture and water features, and is where half of south Delhi goes on a first date.
85. Deer Park in Hauz Khas has spotted deer, rabbits and peacocks wandering a wooded enclosure, free, and connects straight to the Hauz Khas ruins.
86. The Aravalli Biodiversity Park in Vasant Kunj has turned a mining wasteland into restored forest, with marked trails and genuinely good birdwatching.
87. Nehru Park in Chanakyapuri hosts free morning concerts in the cooler months, which is one of the pleasanter free things the city does.

Hidden gems in Delhi that residents mention reluctantly

Every one of these is open to anyone and most are free. They stay quiet because they are awkward to reach, badly signposted, or simply not on the circuit, which is exactly what makes them the most rewarding half-days in the city.

88. Lodhi Art District in Lodhi Colony is India’s first open-air public art district, with dozens of large murals painted across the government housing blocks by artists from around the world. Free, walkable in an hour, and best in soft morning light.
89. Rajon ki Baoli in Mehrauli is a sixteenth-century stepwell, three storeys deep, almost always deserted, and considerably more impressive than the famous one near Connaught Place.
90. Bhuli Bhatiyari ka Mahal is a fourteenth-century hunting lodge stranded in the Central Ridge forest, reached by a scrubby path, with a reputation for being the most haunted spot in Delhi. Go in daylight and with someone else, and treat the ghost stories as the local entertainment they are rather than a reason to stay away.
91. Satpula is a fourteenth-century dam near Khirki, part of Muhammad bin Tughlaq’s water system, and almost entirely forgotten.
92. Coronation Park in Burari is where the British held the 1911 Durbar and where the statues of colonial figures were dumped after independence, George V included. It is bleak, strange and completely empty.
93. Nicholson Cemetery near Kashmere Gate holds graves from the 1857 uprising and is one of the quietest corners in north Delhi.

A few more worth the detour

94. Khooni Darwaza on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg is a Sher Shah Suri gate where the Mughal princes were shot in 1857, now marooned on a traffic island and ignored by thousands of commuters daily.
95. Sanskriti Kendra in Anandgram holds museums of everyday art, terracotta and textiles across a quiet campus near Mehrauli.
96. Hijron ka Khanqah in Mehrauli is a fifteenth-century burial ground for the transgender community, beautifully kept and almost unvisited.
97. The Agrasen ki Baoli at night is officially closed after sunset, so instead watch the light drop into it in the last hour of opening, which few people stay for.

Unusual things to do in Delhi

The last three on the list are the ones I recommend to people who have already done Delhi once and came away thinking they had understood it. None of them are hard to arrange and all of them are odd enough to stay with you.

98. Watch the Beating Retreat at Attari by proxy, or the daily flag ceremony at Wagah’s Delhi equivalent is not actually possible, so do the real alternative: the Change of Guard ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan, held on selected Saturdays, free with online registration, and almost nobody outside Delhi knows it exists.
99. Take the Delhi Metro Airport Express end to end for the sake of it, or better, ride the Blue Line across the Yamuna at rush hour and watch an entire city compress itself into a carriage. It costs under seventy rupees and tells you more about Delhi than most monuments.
100. Spend an evening at a kite shop in Lal Kuan before Independence Day, when the whole lane sells nothing but patang and manjha and the roofs above you fill with people fighting kites. If you are in Delhi in mid-August, this is the thing to do.

Delhi after dark

Delhi stays up later than its reputation suggests, though the official closing time of around 1am for most licensed venues means the city empties fast rather than tapering off. Hauz Khas Village is the obvious cluster, bars stacked above each other in narrow buildings overlooking a thirteenth-century reservoir, which is a strange and very Delhi combination. Connaught Place has the older institutions and the rooftop bars, and Aerocity near the airport has become where the better cocktail places have quietly moved.

For something less alcoholic, the sound and light shows at Red Fort and Purana Qila run most evenings and are cheap, the India Gate stretch is at its best between eight and ten at night, and the Thursday qawwali at Nizamuddin Dargah is the evening I would pick over any bar in the city. Women travelling alone should use app-based cabs rather than autos after dark, which is advice every Delhi resident gives without being asked.

If organised nightlife is your thing, pub crawls and dance shows are worth a look to see what is running in whichever city you are heading to next.

Day trips from Delhi worth the early start

Delhi sits at the top of the Golden Triangle and within reach of several places that justify losing a day to a train or a car. The Gatimaan and Shatabdi trains to Agra are the civilised way to do it, leaving early and getting you there in under two hours.

Agra and the Taj Mahal is the obvious one, and doing it as a day trip is perfectly feasible if you take the early train, book Taj tickets online in advance and accept that you will be tired. The Taj is closed on Fridays, which catches people out constantly. Jaipur is four to five hours by road or train and really wants an overnight rather than a day. Mathura and Vrindavan, about three hours away, are the Krishna pilgrimage towns and extraordinary during Holi.

Closer in, Neemrana Fort is a restored fifteenth-century fort hotel around two hours south with a zipline, and Damdama Lake and the Aravalli trails near Gurugram give you a morning outdoors without leaving the NCR. For longer runs, day trips and multi-day tours are the formats to compare, and train tickets is where to start if you would rather let the railway do the driving.

Getting around Delhi: metro, autos and the airport run

The Delhi Metro is the single best thing about moving around this city and you should default to it for almost everything. Fares run from ₹11 for short hops up to ₹64 for the longest journeys after the August 2025 revision, with discounted slabs on Sundays and national holidays. Buy a rechargeable smart card on arrival rather than queueing for tokens at every station; it saves money and a great deal of time, and the current network map and fare tables sit on the Delhi Tourism metro page if you want to plan routes before you land.

The Airport Express Line connects Indira Gandhi International to New Delhi station in around twenty minutes and is far more pleasant than the road. For everything the metro does not reach, use app-based cabs. Autorickshaws are cheaper and more fun but insist on the meter or agree the fare before you get in, because the meter will otherwise be mysteriously broken.

A few things that will save you grief. Traffic between five and eight in the evening is genuinely immobile, so plan around it. Distances in south Delhi are much larger than the map suggests. And if a driver tells you your hotel has closed down or there are riots in Old Delhi, he is taking you to a commission-paying travel agent, which is the oldest scam in the city and still works often enough to be worth his time.

What to book in advance in Delhi

Delhi is forgiving compared with most capitals, and you can turn up at the vast majority of these places on the day and walk in. There is a short list where that does not hold, though, and getting caught out on any of them means rearranging a day.

The short list that genuinely sells out

The things I would genuinely book ahead: the Rashtrapati Bhavan guided tour, which runs on selected days with ID checks and limited slots; Amrit Udyan during its spring opening window, which is free but requires online registration and fills; the Change of Guard ceremony, same deal; Taj Mahal tickets if you are doing the Agra day trip, along with the Gatimaan or Shatabdi train, both of which sell out; and tables at Bukhara or Indian Accent, which are not walk-in restaurants.

Everything else, including Red Fort, Qutub Minar, Humayun’s Tomb and Akshardham, you can handle on the day, though buying ASI monument tickets online beforehand lets you skip the counter queue, which in December is not a small saving. One genuinely useful change: online ticket booking is now live for more than 170 Archaeological Survey of India monuments across a range of digital platforms, and the Delhi Metro has its own arrangement with the ASI so you can buy monument tickets inside the metro app alongside your travel. Between them that removes most of the queueing that used to define a Delhi sightseeing day. Details are on the government announcement of ASI online booking. If you want to compare what a multi-attraction pass would actually save you anywhere you travel, the attraction pass calculator and the combo savings calculator do the arithmetic for you, and current deals is worth a glance before you book anything.

Best time to visit Delhi

October to March, and it is not close. Within that, the sweet spot is late October into early December and then February into mid-March, when daytime temperatures sit somewhere comfortable and the light is good.

The complication is air quality. Delhi’s worst pollution window runs from roughly late October through January, peaking after Diwali when crop burning in neighbouring states coincides with cooler, stiller air. Live readings are published by the national tourism board and every weather app in the country. It is a real consideration rather than a scare story, and anyone with a respiratory condition should check readings before committing to dates and pack a decent mask. January also brings genuine cold and dense morning fog that delays flights and trains regularly.

April to June is brutal, with temperatures well above forty degrees and very little relief. July to September is monsoon season, which cools things down, turns the ruins green and floods the streets in roughly equal measure. If you can only come in summer, build your days around early mornings, air-conditioned museums and late evenings.

Where to stay in Delhi

Where you base yourself changes the trip more in Delhi than in most cities, because the distances are large and the traffic is punishing. Pick for the metro line as much as the neighbourhood.

Paharganj is the budget option opposite New Delhi station, cheap and central and noisy, and fine if you are not precious about it. Connaught Place puts you on three metro lines with mid-range and business hotels in every direction, which makes it the most practical choice for a short trip. Karol Bagh is a decent middle ground with good value and good food.

For something calmer, Hauz Khas and Greater Kailash in south Delhi have the boutique guesthouses and are near the ruins and the nightlife, at the cost of a longer run into Old Delhi. Aerocity makes sense only for an early flight. And if you want to splurge, the heritage hotels in Lutyens’ Delhi and the restored haveli stays inside the walled city are the two genuinely memorable options.

Scams, safety and the practical stuff nobody tells you

Delhi has a reputation that is partly earned and largely outdated, and the honest position is that it is a big city where ordinary caution goes a long way. The things that actually catch visitors out are almost all commercial rather than dangerous.

The recurring ones: drivers claiming your hotel has shut or the area is closed, in order to deliver you to a travel agent who pays commission; unofficial “tourist information” offices near New Delhi station that are nothing of the kind; autorickshaw meters that stop working the moment you sit down; and people offering to clean your ear, which is a real thing that happens and should be declined.

Practically: carry small notes because change is a permanent negotiation, drink only sealed bottled water, eat street food from busy stalls where turnover is high, and keep your phone out of your back pocket in crowded markets. Women travelling alone should book cabs through an app after dark rather than hailing autos, and should expect staring that is usually rude rather than threatening. Save the local emergency number, 112, before you need it.

Delhi in one, two or three days

If you want the hundred compressed into something you can actually execute, here is how I would spend the time.

One day. Start at Jama Masjid at eight, walk Chandni Chowk and eat your way through Paranthe Wali Gali and Natraj, see the Red Fort before lunch, then take the metro south to Humayun’s Tomb for the late afternoon light and finish at India Gate after dark. It is a lot. It is also a genuinely good day.

Two days. Keep day one as above. Give day two to the south: Qutub Minar first thing, Mehrauli Archaeological Park afterwards while it is still cool, lunch in Hauz Khas, the Lotus Temple or Akshardham in the afternoon, and Lodhi Garden at sunset.

Three days. Add Lutyens’ Delhi, a museum and a market. Rashtrapati Bhavan if you booked it, otherwise Kartavya Path and the National Museum, then Lodhi Art District in the afternoon and Dilli Haat or Sarojini before dinner. If you have a fourth day, use it for the strange stuff: Coronation Park, the toilet museum, Tughlaqabad, Majnu ka Tilla.

Things to do in Delhi: FAQ

More questions about visiting Delhi

Food, transport and day trips

The bottom line on things to do in Delhi

A hundred entries is a daft number for any city and I would not pretend otherwise. The useful thing about having them in one place is that it shows you how wide the gap is between the Delhi most people see in two days and the Delhi that is actually sitting there, mostly free, mostly empty, waiting for somebody to take a slightly longer walk than they planned to.

If you take nothing else from this, take the early mornings. The walled city at eight, Qutub Minar at seven, Lodhi Garden before the joggers thin out. Delhi in that first hour is a completely different and far more generous place than Delhi at two in the afternoon, and almost every visitor misses it because they are at breakfast.

Start planning the rest of the trip with attractions, guided tours and heritage experiences, and if Delhi is one stop on a longer run, day trips and multi-day tours are the places to look next.