Delhi in three days, and what to do with the third

It is also the place where a badly ordered day does the most damage, because it is usually the first day and people form their view of the whole country in it. So this is Delhi in three days in the order we actually build it, with the hours specified, because in Delhi the hour matters as much as the place.

Day one: nothing, then a little

If you land at three in the morning, which most long-haul flights do, day one is a rest day. This is not us padding an itinerary. It is the single most useful thing in it.

We book the room for the night before you land, so you can go straight to bed rather than sitting in a lobby until noon. Then the first morning has nothing in it. Sleep, eat breakfast slowly, sit in a garden.

In the late afternoon, when the light has gone soft and the heat has dropped, one gentle thing:

Humayun’s Tomb at four or five in the afternoon. The Mughal garden tomb that the Taj Mahal was designed from, sixty years earlier, in red sandstone. It is calm, walkable, uncrowded compared to anything you will see later, and it sets up everything you are about to look at in Agra.

Then, if the party is up for it, the Nizamuddin qawwali on a Thursday evening, in the alleys next to the tomb. Devotional singing that has been happening on that spot for centuries, in a crowded, low-ceilinged shrine complex. Go with a guide, cover your head, sit on the floor and stay for an hour. It is the most memorable thing in Delhi and it is nobody’s idea of a first-day sight, which is why we put it on a day that has nothing else in it.

Day two: Old Delhi, early

The whole day turns on starting at eight in the morning.

Old Delhi at eight and Old Delhi at one are two different experiences, and only one of them is a good introduction to India. In the morning the light comes down the alleys, the shops are opening, the deliveries are moving by handcart, and there is room to stand. By midday it is 40 percent hotter, twice as loud and shoulder to shoulder.

The morning we build:

• Jama Masjid at opening, before the tour groups. Climb the southern minaret if it is open for the view over the old city roofline.
• The spice market at Khari Baoli, where the wholesale sacks are opened and everybody sneezes, including the traders.
• Chandni Chowk on foot, or by cycle rickshaw for the first stretch, which is the correct way to understand a street that has been a market since the 1600s.
• A food walk through the lanes, which is where the morning becomes the day. Paratha at Gali Paranthe Wali, kebabs near the mosque, jalebi from a pan the size of a table, a lassi you cannot finish. Eating street food with someone who knows which stall and which hour is the fastest way to lose the fear of eating in India, and it is why we put it on day two rather than day ten. The rules that make it safe are in what to eat in India.
• The Sikh gurdwara at Sis Ganj, shoes off, head covered, and the kitchen behind it feeding anybody who comes.

Then stop. Go back to the hotel at two, swim or sleep, and go out again in the evening. Trying to add a second neighbourhood to an Old Delhi morning is the most common way an itinerary turns a great day into an exhausting one.

Evening option: Sunder Nursery next to Humayun’s Tomb, a restored Mughal park that most visitors do not know exists, or dinner in Hauz Khas or Khan Market.

Day three: the imperial city, and the quiet Delhi

New Delhi is a different city with a different scale, built by the British as a capital and laid out for cars and ceremony rather than for people, which is exactly why the contrast with yesterday is worth a day.

• Rajpath and the government buildings from the car, in the morning. This is a drive-through rather than a walk, and honest itineraries say so.
• Qutub Minar, the oldest thing on this list and among the most beautiful: a 240 foot (73 m) twelfth-century minaret in a ruined complex, with an iron pillar in the courtyard that has not rusted in sixteen hundred years.
• The Lodi Gardens, where Delhi actually relaxes. Fifteenth-century tombs in a park full of joggers, birdwatchers and families. Go at eight in the morning or five in the afternoon.
• The National Museum or the Crafts Museum. The first if you want the sculpture and the miniatures, the second if you want to see the craft traditions you are about to meet in Rajasthan being worked in front of you.
• Gandhi Smriti, the house where Gandhi was killed, which is small, plain and much more affecting than the guidebooks suggest.

If you have a Sunday, the Sunder Nursery farmers market and the Old Delhi book market at Daryaganj are both worth reshaping a morning for.

What we would leave out

The India Gate stop in the middle of the day. It is a large arch by a busy road, and every group itinerary parks there for twenty minutes. See it from the car.

Akshardham. Enormous, modern, no photography, no phones, long security queues, and a full half day gone. Some people love it. We would rather give you Qutub Minar and a nap.

A single day covering Old and New Delhi together. The classic full-day city tour hits eight monuments and lands you back at the hotel unable to name three of them. Two half days, at the right hours, beats one long one every time.

The light and sound show at the Red Fort. The Red Fort itself is worth a morning if you have four days. The show is not.

More of this in what we would skip in India.

Or: give the third day to Agra

Here is the honest alternative, and it is the one we choose about half the time.

Two days in Delhi covers the city properly if the first day is a rest day and the second is Old Delhi. Then take the fast train to Agra on the morning of day three, about two hours city centre to city centre against three and a half to four by road, and sleep in Agra.

That buys you the thing that actually matters: the Taj Mahal at opening, in the first light, before the coaches, which is a completely different building from the Taj Mahal at eleven in the morning. Then Agra Fort in the afternoon, which most day-trippers skip and which is the better piece of architecture. The Taj is closed to visitors on Fridays, and we check your dates against that before anything is booked.

Delhi to Agra as a same-day return, which is what most people are sold, means eight hours in a car and the Taj at the worst hour of the day. We build it as an overnight in the Golden Triangle and Rajasthan in 14 days, and the extra night is the best-value decision in the whole itinerary.

Practical notes from our Delhi office

• Air quality is poor from roughly November into January, badly so in some weeks. If anyone in the party is asthmatic we shorten the Delhi end in those months and say so in the proposal.
• Winter fog in late December and January delays flights and trains by hours. We do not build tight same-day connections then.
• Use ride-hailing apps rather than hailing a taxi, and agree a price with an auto-rickshaw before you get in.
• The metro is excellent, clean and cheap, with a women-only carriage at the front. It is genuinely the fastest way across the city at rush hour.
• Dress. Shoulders and knees covered at the mosque, the gurdwara and the shrine, for everyone, and shoes come off.
• Nobody at a monument is your official guide unless we introduced them.

Plan this trip

Tell us your dates and we will build Delhi in the right order, at the right hours, with the Agra night that most itineraries leave out. Free, and with no obligation.

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Keep reading

• India: the complete guide to planning your trip
• India for the first time: a realistic first itinerary
• What to eat in India, and how not to get ill
• How many days do you need in India?
• India by food and culture, 13 days
• India, planned by people who are actually there

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