◆ Country guide · South Asia

Top 10s across India

A subcontinent with 28 states, 22 scheduled languages and a different kitchen every few hundred kilometres. India is not a country you cross in one trip, it is a country you pick a region of and go deep.

City guides

1,210,854,977

People

Video guides

UNESCO sites

Live destination map

AllDelhi & the Ganges plainRajasthanThe HimalayaMumbai & the west coastThe southThe east

By Wimup Editorial Updated August 2026 15 min read

Best months

Oct · Nov · Feb

Ideal length

14–21 days

Budget / day

$30–90

Language

Hindi & English

Getting around

Trains & domestic flights

State ▾Theme ▾Budget ▾Best month ▾Trip length ▾ 6 guides

Grid Map

Quick answer · where to go in India

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.

All regions Delhi & the Ganges plain Rajasthan The Himalaya Mumbai & the west coast Goa & the Konkan The south The east

Jump to City guides Fun fact Stereotypes Famous Indians Food FAQ

6 India city guides

Sorted by what travelers are saving this month.

Fun fact

One number worth knowing

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 clichés you have heard, what is actually true, and how to fit in.

"It is hot, crowded and chaotic everywhere"

The realityIndia runs from Leh at around 3,500 metres, where June nights are cold and the landscape is high desert, 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 they are avoidable if you get up early.

"Indian food means curry"

The realityThere is no dish called curry in an Indian kitchen. 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 Portuguese left behind.

"Everyone speaks Hindi"

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 whole country is vegetarian"

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.

"It is all spicy"

The realityHeat is regional and often the least of the seasoning. Gujarati food is sweet, Kashmiri cooking is aromatic rather than hot, and a Bengali meal opens with something bitter on purpose. Andhra and Rajasthan are where the chilli actually lives.

Snake charmers, elephants and a cow in every roadOne curry, served from Kashmir to KanyakumariYoga retreats and finding yourself in RishikeshBollywood song and dance as the whole film industryDelhi belly as an unavoidable rite of passageNothing runs on time and nothing is ever quietEverything is negotiable, including the printed price

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

The names behind India's cinema, music, sport, science, politics, art and food. Pick a field.

Mahatma Gandhi

Led the independence movement on non-violent resistance, and set the template a century of protest borrowed from

B. R. Ambedkar

Jurist and reformer who chaired the drafting committee of the Indian constitution

Rabindranath Tagore

Poet, the first non-European awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1913, and the writer of two national anthems

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Aerospace scientist who became president, and the one politician nobody argues about

Sachin Tendulkar

Batted for India across 24 years and holds the most runs in both Test and one-day international cricket

Lata Mangeshkar

Playback singer whose voice carried Hindi cinema for six decades

Satyajit Ray

Director of the Apu Trilogy, and the reason world cinema pays attention to Bengal

Amitabh Bachchan

The angry young man of 1970s Hindi cinema, still working and still the biggest name in the room

Shah Rukh Khan

Actor and producer with an audience measured in continents rather than countries

Rajinikanth

Tamil cinema's biggest star, and proof that Bollywood is not the whole industry

Deepika Padukone

Actor and producer who moved between Hindi blockbusters and Hollywood, and made mental health a public conversation

S. S. Rajamouli

Director of the Baahubali films and RRR, which took an Academy Award for its original song

Priyanka Chopra Jonas

Actor and producer who went from Hindi cinema to American television and back

A. R. Rahman

Composer with two Academy Awards for Slumdog Millionaire, and a catalogue that spans Tamil and Hindi film

Ravi Shankar

Sitar player who took Hindustani classical music to Western concert halls and festivals

Zakir Hussain

Tabla player who made the instrument a solo voice on stages worldwide

M. S. Subbulakshmi

Carnatic singer, the first musician awarded the Bharat Ratna

Arundhati Roy

Won the Booker Prize in 1997 for The God of Small Things, and writes essays that argue with the country

M. F. Husain

Painter of modern India, prolific, barefoot and permanently controversial

Amrita Sher-Gil

Painter who fused European training with Indian subject matter and died at 28

R. K. Narayan

Novelist who built the fictional town of Malgudi and set most of his work inside it

Neeraj Chopra

Javelin thrower who took Olympic gold at Tokyo, India's first in track and field

Viswanathan Anand

Five-time world chess champion, and the reason India now produces grandmasters in batches

P. V. Sindhu

Badminton world champion and a two-time Olympic medallist

Virat Kohli

Batter and former captain who set the fitness standard the rest of the side now trains to

C. V. Raman

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for the scattering of light that carries his name

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Self-taught mathematician from Tamil Nadu whose notebooks are still being worked through

Vikram Sarabhai

Founded the Indian space programme, which now lands craft at the lunar south pole

Amartya Sen

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 for work on welfare and famine

Jawaharlal Nehru

The first prime minister, and the architect of the republic's early institutions

Indira Gandhi

The country's only woman prime minister so far, across two terms and the Emergency

Vallabhbhai Patel

Home minister who negotiated the princely states into the union, commemorated by the world's tallest statue

Sanjeev Kapoor

The television chef who taught a generation to cook, and the first to make it a national career

Garima Arora

First Indian woman awarded a Michelin star, at Gaa in Bangkok, which now holds two

Vineet Bhatia

Chef who has held Michelin stars in London for modern Indian cooking

Manish Mehrotra

Chef behind Indian Accent, the Delhi dining room that reset what Indian fine dining could be

Must-try Indian food

The north, the south, the street, the breads, the coasts and the sweets. Pick a category.

Butter chicken

Delhi's export to the world: tandoori chicken finished in tomato, butter and cream.

Rogan josh

Kashmiri lamb braised with dried chilli and fennel. Red from the chilli, not from heat.

Dal makhani

Black lentils cooked overnight until they turn glossy. The benchmark every Punjabi kitchen is judged on.

Chole bhature

Spiced chickpeas with a balloon of fried bread. A breakfast that ends the day's other plans.

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.

Masala dosa

Fermented rice and lentil crepe around spiced potato, with coconut chutney and sambar.

Idli with sambar

Steamed rice cakes, no oil, no heat, and the gentlest breakfast in the country.

Hyderabadi biryani

Rice and marinated meat sealed under dough and cooked together, not stirred together.

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.

Pani puri

Hollow crisp spheres filled with spiced water, eaten one at a time, faster than you can talk.

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.

Aloo tikki chaat

Fried potato patty under yoghurt, tamarind and mint. The north's afternoon habit.

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.

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.

Khichdi

Rice and lentils cooked soft together. Comfort food, sick food, and the national reset button.

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, not bland.

Shorshe ilish

Bengal's hilsa in mustard, the dish the region argues about most and skips fewest bones for.

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.

Gulab jamun

Fried milk-solid dumplings in rose syrup, served warm at every celebration.

Rasgulla

Bengali cheese balls poached in light syrup, spongy rather than dense.

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.

Kulfi

Milk boiled down before it is frozen, so it is denser than ice cream and does not melt as fast.

Masala chai

Boiled with milk, sugar and spice, poured from height, and sold on every platform in the country.

Filter coffee

South Indian coffee and chicory, pulled between tumbler and dabara to cool and froth it.

Lassi

Yoghurt whipped sweet or salted. The Punjabi version arrives in a glass you cannot lift one-handed.

Nimbu pani

Lime, water, sugar and salt. The one thing worth ordering in April on the plains.

Feni

Goan spirit distilled from cashew apple or coconut sap, protected by geographical indication.

India travel FAQ

How many days do you need in India?+

Two weeks for one region and a neighbour, not for the country. Ten days covers Delhi, Agra and Jaipur properly with time left for Udaipur or Jodhpur. Add four or five days and the same trip reaches Varanasi or the Himalayan foothills. If you have a week, pick one base and take day trips out of it: the distances are long and the map flatters them.

When is the best time to visit India?+

October to March for almost everywhere. The rains have gone, the plains are clear, and the north is cool rather than cold. April and May are hot enough to plan around, the southwest monsoon runs June to September, and December carries Christmas and New Year prices in Rajasthan and Goa. The Himalaya inverts all of it: Ladakh, Spiti and the high valleys are only reliably open from June to September.

Do you need a visa for India?+

Yes, with very few exceptions. Citizens of well over 170 countries can apply online for an e-Tourist visa in 30-day, one-year or five-year forms, and it is issued before you fly. Use the government portal at indianvisaonline.gov.in rather than the agents that outrank it in search. The e-visa is not extendable and does not cover protected or restricted areas, so the northeast, Sikkim and border Ladakh need a separate permit.

Is India safe to travel in?+

The ordinary city rules do most of the work: a ride-hailing app or a prepaid taxi rather than a street car, an arrival timed for daylight, a hotel booked before you land on the first night, and an eye on your bag at stations. Women travelling alone should read their own government's advisory and their hotel's, and reserved coaches for women exist on trains and metros for a reason. 112 reaches police, fire and ambulance nationwide. The most common problem is not crime, it is the commission tout at the station insisting your hotel has closed.

Is India expensive to visit?+

It is one of the best value countries in the world to travel in. Our Indian city guides work out around $30 to $90 per person per day at a mid-range level, with Mumbai at the top of that band and Jaipur at the bottom. Trains, street food and museums cost very little; imported wine, international hotel chains and internal flights booked late are where budgets go.

Know before you go

The essentials for planning an India trip.

Currency

Indian rupee (₹)

Cards work in hotels, malls and city restaurants. Everything else runs on cash and on UPI, the instant payment system behind the QR code taped to every counter. Visitors can load a prepaid UPI One World wallet on a passport and visa, which is the closest thing to paying like a local without an Indian bank account. The rupee is not traded freely abroad, so change money after you land rather than before you fly.

Language

Hindi & English

Hindi in the Devanagari script and English are the official languages of the Union, and 22 languages are listed in the Eighth Schedule of the constitution. English carries signage, tickets, menus and hotel desks nationwide. In Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and West Bengal it will take you further than Hindi does.

Emergency

112

One number covers police, fire and ambulance across every state and union territory, through the Emergency Response Support System. It also answers SMS and the 112 India app, which matters where a call will not connect.

Visa

e-Tourist visa, applied online

Almost every visitor needs a visa, and for citizens of well over 170 countries that means the e-Tourist visa: applied for online, in 30-day double entry, one-year and five-year multiple entry forms. Apply only on the government portal, since the sites that rank above it are agents charging a markup. Your passport needs six months of validity and two blank pages. The e-visa is not extendable and does not cover protected or restricted areas.

Getting around

Trains & domestic flights

The railway is the default and the best of it is the overnight sleeper: book the moment the window opens, because the good trains fill months out. Air-conditioned chair car handles the daytime hops between the northern cities. Fly the long diagonals, Delhi to Kochi or Mumbai to Kolkata, rather than spending two nights on them. In the cities, use the metro where there is one and a ride-hailing app where there is not.

Tipping

About 10% in restaurants

A service charge cannot be added to your bill by default. Consumer guidelines make it voluntary, so if it appears and you did not agree to it, you can ask for it to be removed. Around 10 percent at a table is normal, small notes for porters, drivers and housekeeping, and cash is preferred.

Monsoon

June to September

The southwest monsoon reaches Kerala around the first of June, covers the country by mid-July and has withdrawn from most of it by the middle of October. It is not a washout everywhere: the rain comes in bursts, the Western Ghats and Kerala are at their greenest, and Ladakh sits in the rain shadow and stays dry. The Tamil Nadu coast then takes a second season of rain from October into December.

Permits

Needed for some regions

Parts of the northeast, Sikkim, and the areas of Ladakh near the border sit under the Protected Area regime, and foreign visitors need a permit on top of a visa. Rules change often and are set per state, so check before booking anything non-refundable that far out.

Alcohol

Dry in four states

Bihar, Gujarat, Nagaland and Mizoram prohibit the sale of alcohol. Gujarat issues visitor permits through licensed hotels. Everywhere else licensing, drinking age and dry days are set by the state, so a bar that is open in Goa may have no equivalent across the border.

Time zone

One, at UTC+5:30

India Standard Time covers the whole country and there is no daylight saving. It is the reason the sun is up over Arunachal Pradesh well before five in the morning in June while Gujarat is still dark.

Water

Sealed or filtered

Drink sealed bottled or properly filtered water and check the seal. Street food is not the risk people expect: the busy stall cooking in front of you is a better bet than the quiet one, and the thing to be careful with is cut fruit, salad and ice from an unknown kitchen.

When to visit India

A long dry season, a monsoon that is regional rather than national, and one summer window in the mountains.

Full month guide →

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Best, dry and clear across most of the country Peak, Christmas and New Year, when Rajasthan and Goa book out Good, the shoulder either side of the monsoon Off on the plains, either pre-monsoon heat or rain, and the one window for Ladakh