Pick one region and one add-on, not five. Delhi, Agra and Jaipur is the opening move and it works inside a week, with the Taj Mahal and Amber Fort doing the heavy lifting. Add Rajasthan for forts, lake palaces and the desert, Kerala for backwaters and the slowest cooking in the country, or Varanasi for the ghats at dawn. Ladakh is the summer exception, open when the mountain roads are. The reliable window everywhere else is October to March.
7 India city guides
Fun fact
Indian Railways runs on about 68,600 route kilometres and carries more than 20 million passengers a day, which makes it one of the largest rail networks in the world under a single management.
Stereotypes, sorted out
The realityIndia runs from Leh at around 3,500 metres, cold at night even in June, to the tea slopes above Munnar and the empty salt flats of the Rann. The crowds people picture belong to specific streets in specific cities at specific hours, and an early start avoids them.
The realityNo Indian kitchen has a dish called curry. The word is a colonial catch-all for a hundred distinct gravies. The north cooks with wheat, dairy and the tandoor, the south with rice, coconut, tamarind and curry leaf, Bengal with mustard and river fish, Goa with vinegar and pork.
The realityHindi and English are the official languages of the Union, and 22 sit in the constitution's Eighth Schedule. Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Bengali are first languages to hundreds of millions of people, and across most of the south English will take you further than Hindi will.
The realityIndia has the deepest vegetarian cooking anywhere, and every packet carries a green dot to prove the contents, but most of the country eats meat or fish. The coasts eat fish daily, Kolkata and Kerala eat both, and Lucknow and Hyderabad built entire cuisines on mutton.
The realityHeat is regional and often the least of the seasoning. Gujarati food is sweet, Kashmiri cooking is aromatic and mild, and a Bengali meal opens with something bitter on purpose. Andhra and Rajasthan are where the chilli lives.
Cultural notes that actually help
- Shoes come off at temples, mosques, gurdwaras and most homes. There is almost always somewhere to leave them, socks are fine, and stepping over someone's feet warrants an apology.
- Eat, pay and pass things with the right hand. The left has a job and it is not this one.
- Cover shoulders and knees at religious sites. Sikh gurdwaras ask everyone to cover their head, and a scarf in your bag solves this everywhere at once.
- The head tilt is agreement. Somewhere between yes, fine and I understand, and never confusion.
- Ask before photographing people, and put the camera away entirely at cremation ghats. Many temple interiors do not allow it either, and the sign will be small.
- Bargaining belongs in markets and to street sellers, not in shops with printed prices. Packaged goods carry a maximum retail price by law, and paying above it is the actual scam.
Famous Indian faces
Mahatma Gandhi
B. R. Ambedkar
Lata Mangeshkar
Satyajit Ray
Amitabh Bachchan
Shah Rukh Khan
Rajinikanth
Deepika Padukone
A. R. Rahman
Ravi Shankar
Zakir Hussain
M. S. Subbulakshmi
Arundhati Roy
M. F. Husain
Neeraj Chopra
Viswanathan Anand
P. V. Sindhu
C. V. Raman
Amartya Sen
Jawaharlal Nehru
Vallabhbhai Patel
Manish Mehrotra
Rabindranath Tagore
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Sachin Tendulkar
S. S. Rajamouli
Priyanka Chopra Jonas
Amrita Sher-Gil
R. K. Narayan
Virat Kohli
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Vikram Sarabhai
Indira Gandhi
Sanjeev Kapoor
Garima Arora
Vineet Bhatia
Must-try Indian food
Butter chicken
Delhi's export to the world: tandoori chicken finished in tomato, butter and cream.
Dal makhani
Black lentils cooked overnight until glossy. Every Punjabi kitchen is judged on it.
Chole bhature
Spiced chickpeas with a balloon of fried bread. A breakfast that ends the day's plans.
Masala dosa
Fermented rice and lentil crepe around spiced potato, with coconut chutney and sambar.
Hyderabadi biryani
Rice and marinated meat sealed under dough and cooked together, not stirred together.
Pani puri
Hollow crisp spheres filled with spiced water, eaten one at a time, fast.
Vada pav
Mumbai's potato fritter in a bun with dry garlic chutney. The city runs on it.
Pav bhaji
Mashed vegetables cooked down on a griddle with butter, scooped up with soft rolls.
Kathi roll
Kolkata's kebab wrapped in an egg-washed paratha with onion and lime.
Momos
Himalayan dumplings that colonised every north Indian street corner, steamed or fried.
Bhel puri
Puffed rice tossed with tamarind, chutney and raw onion, mixed to order on the beach.
Khichdi
Rice and lentils cooked soft together. Comfort food, sick food, the national reset.
Shorshe ilish
Bengal's hilsa in mustard, the region's most argued-over dish, bones and all.
Gulab jamun
Fried milk-solid dumplings in rose syrup, served warm at every celebration.
Rasgulla
Bengali cheese balls poached in light syrup until spongy.
Jalebi
Batter spirals fried and soaked in syrup, best straight out of the pan with rabri.
Mysore pak
Gram flour, sugar and a great deal of ghee, from the Mysore palace kitchens.
Masala chai
Boiled with milk, sugar and spice, poured from height, sold on every platform.
Filter coffee
South Indian coffee and chicory, pulled between tumbler and dabara to cool and froth it.
Lassi
Yoghurt whipped sweet or salted. Punjab serves it in a glass you cannot lift one-handed.
Rogan josh
Kashmiri lamb braised with dried chilli and fennel. Red from the chilli, not from heat.
Galouti kebab
Lucknow's minced lamb kebab, tenderised with raw papaya and eaten off a warm sheermal.
Laal maas
Rajasthani mutton in Mathania chillies and yoghurt, and the hottest thing on this list.
Idli with sambar
Steamed rice cakes, no oil, no heat, and the gentlest breakfast in the country.
Chettinad pepper chicken
Tamil Nadu's spice-trading cuisine, black pepper forward and roasted before it is ground.
Appam with stew
Lacy coconut pancakes from Kerala with a mild coconut-milk stew. Sunday breakfast.
Pesarattu
Andhra's green gram crepe, eaten with ginger chutney and a layer of upma folded inside.
Aloo tikki chaat
Fried potato patty under yoghurt, tamarind and mint. The north's afternoon habit.
Tandoori naan
Leavened white flour bread slapped onto the clay oven wall and pulled off blistered.
Amritsari kulcha
Stuffed, crisp and served with chole and a slab of butter that is not optional.
Stuffed paratha
Flatbread packed with potato, cauliflower or radish, griddled and eaten with curd.
Goan fish curry
Coconut, tamarind and Kashmiri chilli, over rice, ideally within sight of the sea.
Meen moilee
Kerala fish in a pale coconut-milk sauce with turmeric and curry leaf. Restrained.
Prawn balchão
Goan prawns pickled in vinegar and chilli, a Portuguese habit that stayed.
Kori gassi
Mangalorean chicken in roasted coconut and chilli, eaten with rice dumplings.
Kulfi
Milk boiled down before freezing, denser than ice cream and slower to melt.
Nimbu pani
Lime, water, sugar and salt. The one thing worth ordering in April on the plains.
Feni
Goan spirit from cashew apple or coconut sap, protected by geographical indication.
