Top 10 Things to Do in Delhi

India Gate at sunrise is one of the great urban experiences of any capital city in the world — the 42-metre sandstone arch floodlit against a lightening sky, the Kartavya Path stretching empty toward Rashtrapati Bhavan, the first joggers appearing on the lawns, and the city not yet awake. By 6 AM the park is already populated with Delhi residents doing their morning exercise in the shadow of the war memorial, a beautifully democratic use of the ceremonial space that the British Raj designed for imperial parades. The eternal flame of the Amar Jawan Jyoti burns beneath the arch regardless of the hour, and in the early morning quiet its light has a quality that the daytime crowds cannot replicate.

A guided or self-directed food walk through Old Delhi is the most concentrated culinary experience available in any city in India — three or four hours moving through Chandni Chowk and its tributary lanes, eating at establishments that have been serving the same things for decades or centuries. The ideal route begins with jalebi and rabri at Old Famous Jalebi Wala, continues with parantha in the Gali, moves to nihari or seekh kebab near Jama Masjid, and concludes with dahi bhalle at Natraj and kulfi from a lane cart. The food is extraordinary; the lanes are an immersion in a medieval city that has survived into the 21st century with its commercial logic intact. Hire a local guide for the first visit — the lanes require someone who knows them.

The Qutub Minar complex at the golden hour — when the sun drops behind the Mehrauli ridge and the light turns from white to amber to deep orange — is one of Delhi's most ravishing visual experiences. The 72.5-metre tower glows with extraordinary warmth, the carved sandstone catching the light in ways that the midday glare obscures completely. The Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque's carved columns throw long shadows across the lawn, and the Iron Pillar's strange surface seems almost to breathe in the changing light. Arrive an hour before sunset, walk the complex slowly, and stay until the site closes — the last 20 minutes, when most tourists have left and the light has gone deep red, are the most extraordinary.

A leisurely afternoon at Dilli Haat — the government-run open-air craft market where artisans from all 29 Indian states rotate through 62 stalls — is the most efficient and most pleasurable way to understand the breadth of India's craft heritage in a single visit. The market operates on fixed prices (no haggling required), which means the time usually spent negotiating can be spent actually talking to the artisans about their work. The rotating state food pavilions offer the extraordinary opportunity to eat a genuine Himachhal Pradesh dham or a Chhattisgarh meal that would otherwise require a 1,000-kilometre journey. Come with a generous budget and comfortable shoes.

The Lodhi Art District — created by the St+Art India Foundation in the lanes of Lodhi Colony — is India's finest public art destination and one of the most remarkable urban art projects anywhere in the world. Over 50 large-scale murals by Indian and international artists transform the walls of this 1930s British-era residential colony into an open-air gallery with no admission charge and no closing time. The works range from the monumental hyperrealism of Guido van Helten's portraits to abstract explorations of Indian geometric traditions. The best time to walk is early morning or late afternoon, when the light is directional and the streets are quiet enough to stand and look without being moved along by traffic.

Humayun's Tomb in the early morning — before the tour groups arrive and when the Aga Khan-restored char bagh gardens are at their most serene — is the closest thing Delhi has to a perfect meditative experience. The four-quartered garden, divided by water channels that have been restored to their Mughal original, frames the great domed tomb in a geometry of cypress trees, flowering plants, and still water that was designed to evoke paradise. Walking the garden paths slowly, pausing at each quadrant, looking at the tomb from different angles as the morning light changes — this is how Mughal architecture was meant to be experienced, not rushed through on a tour schedule.

Chandni Chowk after dark is a different city from its daytime self — the wholesale trade winds down, the street food vendors intensify, and the lanes fill with a different crowd: families, young couples, and groups of friends eating their way through the bazaar by the light of bare bulbs and neon signs. The best starting point is Paranthe Wali Gali for dinner, then a walk along the main road to the eastern end where snack vendors set up at dusk, and a conclusion with kulfi or rabri from one of the dessert stalls near Jama Masjid. The Old Delhi skyline at night — the minarets of Jama Masjid lit against the dark sky, the Red Fort's walls illuminated in the middle distance — is one of Delhi's most evocative visual experiences.

The Thursday evening qawwali at the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya is one of the great musical and spiritual experiences available in any city in the world. Hereditary musicians who have sung here for generations perform devotional qawwali — the Sufi genre developed largely by Amir Khusrau, whose grave is just steps away — in the lantern-lit courtyard of a 14th-century shrine, for an audience that includes Muslim devotees, Hindu pilgrims, Sikh visitors, and international travellers, all sitting together on the marble floor. The music builds slowly, over hours, into something that transcends religious categories. It is free, it requires no booking, and it begins around 6 PM on Thursdays.

The Mehrauli Archaeological Park — surrounding the Qutub Minar complex — contains an extraordinary density of medieval monuments from the 10th to 15th centuries, most of them unrestored, accessible, and virtually unvisited by the tourists who crowd the Qutub Minar itself. A guided walk through the park reveals Balban's Tomb (the first true arch in India), the tomb of Jamali Kamali (with its exquisite painted interior), the Rajon ki Baoli (a stunning stepped-well), and dozens of nameless pavilions and gateways that have been slowly consumed by the landscape. The park closes at sunset, and the walk through its ancient ruins in the company of parakeets and the sound of the city fading is one of Delhi's most extraordinary experiences.

Cycling the wide, tree-lined avenues of Lutyens' Delhi in the early morning — before the government convoys and diplomatic cars fill the roads — is one of the finest urban cycling experiences in India. The avenues of Lodhi Road, Teen Murti Marg, Aurobindo Marg, and the leafy bungalow lanes of the diplomatic enclave are all traversable on rented cycles from multiple hire points near India Gate. The route from India Gate along Rajpath to Rashtrapati Bhavan, then south along the diplomatic enclave roads toward Lodhi Gardens, covers about 12 kilometres and passes through the most historically and architecturally significant part of New Delhi in a way that no car journey replicates. End with breakfast at a nearby dhaba.