Kunzum Travel Cafe

Delhi

　　Quirky Kunzum has a pay-what-you-like policy for the French-press coffee and tea, and sells its own brand of travel guides to Delhi. There’s free wi-fi, a few travel books and magazines to browse, and paints and brushes on a table for you to produce your own artwork. ...

Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum

Delhi

　　In the residence of controversial former prime minister Indira Gandhi is this interesting museum devoted to her life and her political-heavyweight family. It displays her personal effects, including the blood-stained sari she was wearing when she was assassinated in 1984; in the back garden a glass-covered pathway traces her final...

Indian Accent

Delhi

　　Inside luxury Lodhi hotel, though privately run, Indian Accent is one of the capital's top dining experiences. Chef Manish Mehrotra works his magic using seasonal ingredients married in surprising and beautifully creative combinations. The tasting menu is astoundingly good, with wow-factor combinations such as tandoori bacon prawns or paper dosa...

Café Turtle

Delhi

　　Allied to the Full Circle Bookstore, this brightly painted boho cafe gets busy with chattering bookish types, and is ideal when you're in the mood for coffee and cake in cosy surroundings, with a leafy outdoor terrace as well. There is also a branch in Nizamuddin East. ...

Connaught Place

Delhi

　　This confusing circular shopping district was named after George V’s uncle, the Duke of Connaught, and fashioned after the Palladian colonnades of Bath. Greying, whitewashed, colonnaded streets radiate out from the central circle of Rajiv Chowk, with blocks G to N in the outer circle and A to F in...

Rashtrapati Bhavan

Delhi

　　Formerly home to the British Viceroy, the President’s House has 340 rooms, with 2.5km of corridors, and it's fascinating to take a peek inside. Your guided visit takes in the domed Durbar Hall, the intimate presidential library and the gilded Ashoka Hall. Tours must be pre-booked and paid for online....

Dilli Haat

Delhi

　　Right beside INA metro station, this popular, but somewhat stage-managed, open-air food-and-crafts market is a cavalcade of colour and sells regional handicrafts from all over India; bargain hard. At the far end are food stands where you can sample cuisine from every corner of the country. Beware impostors; this is...

Big Chill

Delhi

　　Popular, film-poster-lined cafe at Khan Market, packed with chattering Delhiites. The menu is a telephone directory of Continental and Indian dishes (₹290 to ₹625). Nearby is its spin-off cakery (for cakes and pastries) and creamery (for ice cream). ...

Hauz Khas Village

Delhi

　　This arty little enclave has narrow lanes crammed with boutiques selling designer Indian clothing, handicrafts, contemporary ceramics, handmade furniture and old Bollywood posters. Intriguingly, it's located beside numerous 13th- and 14th-century ruins, as well as a forested deer park and a lake. Standout eating and drinking options include Naivedyam and...

Sunder Nursery

Delhi

　　One of Delhi's newest tourist sights, this wonderful park was an overgrown wasteland until recent renovations brought the 16th-century Mughal gardens back to something approaching their former glory. It's now a vast landscaped heritage park with clipped lawns, delicate waterways and a network of paths dotted with fruit trees, flower...

Yum Yum Cha

Delhi

　　Chinese dim sum, Japanese sushi and Thai soups and salads in modern surrounds. ...

Khan Market

Delhi

　　Khan Market is Delhi's most-upmarket shopping enclave, the most expensive place to rent a shop in India, and is favoured by the elite and expats. Its boutiques focus on fashion, books and homewares, and it's also a good place to eat and drink. 　　For handmade paper, check out Anand Stationers,...

National Gallery of Modern Art

Delhi

　　Housed in the Maharaja of Jaipur's domed former palace (built in 1936), Delhi’s flagship art gallery displays collections tracing the development of Indian art from the mid-19th century to the present day, from ‘Company Paintings’ created by Indian artists to please their British rulers to the artworks of Nobel Prize–winner...

Al-Jawahar

Delhi

　　Although overshadowed by its famous neighbour, Karim's, Al-Jawahar is also fantastic, serving up tasty Mughlai cuisine at Formica tables in an orderly dining room, and you can watch breads being freshly made at the front. Kebabs and mutton curries dominate the menu, but it also does good butter chicken and...

Lodi Garden

Delhi

　　Delhi's loveliest escape was originally named after the wife of the British Resident, Lady Willingdon, who had two villages cleared in 1936 in order to landscape a park containing the Lodi-era tombs. Today, these lush, tree-shaded gardens – a favoured getaway for Delhi's elite, local joggers and courting couples –...

Spice Market

Delhi

　　It feels as if little has changed for centuries in Delhi's fabulously atmospheric, labyrinthine spice market, as labourers hustle through the narrow lanes with huge packages of herbs and spices on their heads whilst sunlight pours down through cracks in the hessian sacks hanging overhead for shade. The colours are...

Pandara Market

Delhi

　　This small, but enduring food market, made up of a dozen-or-so restaurants and ice-cream shops, set around a quiet square, is the go-to place for excellent Mughlai and Punjabi food. Prices and standards are high. For quality food, try Gulati, Havemore, Pindi or Chicken Inn. For traditional sweets and ice...

Tughlaqabad

Delhi

　　This magnificent 14th-century ruined fort, half reclaimed by jungle and gradually being encroached on by villages, was Delhi's third incarnation, built by Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlaq. The sultan poached workers from the Sufi saint Nizam-ud-din, who issued a curse that shepherds would inhabit the fort. However, it's monkeys rather than shepherds that...

Purana Qila

Delhi

　　Shh, whisper it quietly: this place is better than the Red Fort. Delhi's 'Old Fort' isn't as magnificent in size and grandeur, but it's far more pleasant to explore, with tree-shaded landscaped gardens to relax in, crumbling ruins to climb over (and even under, in the case of the tunnels...

Qutb Minar Complex

Delhi

　　If you only have time to visit one of Delhi's ancient ruins, make it this. The first monuments here were erected by the sultans of Mehrauli, and subsequent rulers expanded on their work, hiring the finest craftspeople and artisans to set in stone the triumph of Muslim rule. The complex...

Hazrat Nizam-ud-din Dargah

Delhi

　　Visiting the marble shrine of Muslim Sufi saint Nizam-ud-din Auliya is Delhi's most mystical, magical experience. The dargah is hidden away in a tangle of bazaars selling rose petals, attars (perfumes) and offerings, and on some evenings you can hear the qawwali (Sufi devotional singing), amid crowds of devotees. The...

Jama Masjid

Delhi

　　A beautiful pocket of calm at the heart of Old Delhi's mayhem, the capital's largest mosque is built on a 10m elevation. It can hold a mind-blowing 25,000 people. The marble and red-sandstone structure, known also as the ‘Friday Mosque’, was Shah Jahan’s final architectural triumph, built between 1644 and...

Red Fort

Delhi

　　Founded by Emperor Shah Jahan and surrounded by a magnificent 18m-high wall, this fort took 10 years to construct (1638–48) and is rumoured to have had the decapitated bodies of prisoners built into the foundations for luck. It once overlooked the Yamuna River, which has now shrunk to some distance...

Mehrauli Archaeological Park

Delhi

　　There are extraordinary riches scattered around Mehrauli, with more than 440 monuments – from the 10th century to the British era – dotting a forest and the village itself behind the forest. In the forest, most impressive are the time-ravaged tombs of Balban and Quli Khan, his son, and the...