--- title: "Top 10 Things To Do in India (City Guides) | Wimup" description: "Browse Wimup's Top 10 guides across India, city by city, mapped and filmed. When to go, which region to pick first, and what to eat when you get there." url: https://wimup.com/country/india type: Country guide updated: 2026-10-23 publisher: Wimup (https://wimup.com) --- # 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. ## Quick answer 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**. ## Quick facts - **Best months:** Oct · Nov · Feb - **Ideal length:** 14–21 days - **Budget per day:** $30–90 - **Language:** Hindi & English - **Getting around:** Trains & domestic flights - **13** City guides - **1,210,854,977** People - **5** Video guides - **44** UNESCO sites India divides into regions that each hold a full itinerary. The north carries Delhi, the Mughal cities of Agra and Jaipur, and the Himalayan foothills above them at Rishikesh, Shimla and Leh. The west is Mumbai, the Gujarati coast and the desert forts of Rajasthan. The south runs on a different alphabet and a different lunch: Kerala backwaters, the temple towns of Tamil Nadu, and the Deccan cities of Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The east holds Kolkata, the tea gardens of Darjeeling and the Sundarbans delta. Domestic flights link the corners in two to three hours, and the railway does the same thing overnight for a fraction of the fare. ## 13 India city guides 1. [Mumbai](https://wimup.com/city/mumbai.md): Asia · 10 picks 2. [New Delhi](https://wimup.com/city/new-delhi.md): Asia · 10 picks 3. [Jaipur](https://wimup.com/city/jaipur.md): Asia · 10 picks 4. [Mysore](https://wimup.com/city/mysore.md): Asia · 10 picks 5. [Rishikesh](https://wimup.com/city/rishikesh.md): Asia · 10 picks 6. [Udaipur](https://wimup.com/city/udaipur.md): Asia · 10 picks 7. [Hampi](https://wimup.com/city/hampi.md): Asia · 10 picks 8. [Leh](https://wimup.com/city/leh.md): Asia · 10 picks 9. [Dharamshala](https://wimup.com/city/dharamshala.md): Asia · 10 picks 10. [Jaisalmer](https://wimup.com/city/jaisalmer.md): Asia · 10 picks 11. [Munnar](https://wimup.com/city/munnar.md): Asia · 10 picks 12. [Pushkar](https://wimup.com/city/pushkar.md): Asia · 10 picks 13. [Alappuzha](https://wimup.com/city/alappuzha.md): Asia · 10 picks ## Know before you go - **Population:** 1,210,854,977 - **Area:** 3,287,263 km² - **Density:** 382 / km² - **Capital:** New Delhi - **Major cities:** Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata - **Tourism board:** Official site - **Currency:** Indian rupee (₹) Cards work in hotels, malls and city restaurants. Everything else runs on cash and UPI, the QR-code payment system, and visitors can load a UPI One World wallet. Change money after you land. - **Language:** Hindi & English Hindi and English are the official languages, with 22 listed in the constitution. English carries signs, tickets and menus, and beats Hindi in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and West Bengal. - **Calling code:** +91 - **Power:** 230V · Type C/D/M - **Emergency:** 112 One number for police, fire and ambulance in every state and union territory. It also takes SMS and the 112 India app, useful where a call will not connect. - **Visa:** e-Tourist visa, applied online Most visitors need the e-Tourist visa, applied for online in 30-day, one-year or five-year forms. Use only the government portal. It cannot be extended and does not cover restricted areas. - **Getting around:** Trains & domestic flights Rail is the default, and overnight sleepers fill months out, so book when the window opens. Fly the long diagonals, Delhi to Kochi or Mumbai to Kolkata. In cities, use the metro or a ride-hailing app. - **Tipping:** About 10% in restaurants Service charges are voluntary under consumer guidelines, so ask for one you did not agree to be removed. Around 10 percent at a table is normal, plus small notes for porters and drivers, in cash. - **Monsoon:** June to September The southwest monsoon reaches Kerala around the first of June and withdraws by mid-October. Rain comes in bursts, the Ghats turn green, and Ladakh stays dry. Tamil Nadu gets rain October to December. - **Permits:** Needed for some regions Parts of the northeast, Sikkim and border areas of Ladakh need a Protected Area permit on top of a visa. Rules are set per state and change often, so check before booking. - **Alcohol:** Dry in four states Bihar, Gujarat, Nagaland and Mizoram ban alcohol sales, though Gujarat issues visitor permits through licensed hotels. Elsewhere each state sets its own licensing, drinking age and dry days. - **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 filtered water. A busy stall cooking in front of you is safer than a quiet one; the real risks are cut fruit, salad and ice from an unknown kitchen. ## When to visit - **Jan** (best) - **Feb** (best) - **Mar** (good) - **Apr** - **May** - **Jun** - **Jul** - **Aug** - **Sep** (good) - **Oct** (best) - **Nov** (best) - **Dec** (peak) ## 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 - **Myth:** It is hot, crowded and chaotic everywhere **Reality:** India 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. - **Myth:** Indian food means curry **Reality:** No 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. - **Myth:** Everyone speaks Hindi **Reality:** Hindi 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. - **Myth:** The whole country is vegetarian **Reality:** India 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. - **Myth:** It is all spicy **Reality:** Heat 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. - 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**: Led independence through non-violent resistance, a template a century of protest borrowed - **B. R. Ambedkar**: Jurist and reformer who chaired the drafting committee of the Indian constitution - **Rabindranath Tagore**: Poet, first non-European Nobel laureate in Literature (1913), writer of two anthems - **A. P. J. Abdul Kalam**: Aerospace scientist who became president, and the one politician nobody argues about - **Sachin Tendulkar**: Batted for India for 24 years, top run-scorer in both Test and one-day 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 - **Shah Rukh Khan**: Actor and producer whose audience is measured in continents - **Rajinikanth**: Tamil cinema's biggest star, and proof that Bollywood is not the whole industry - **Deepika Padukone**: Actor in Hindi blockbusters and Hollywood who 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 Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire, and a Tamil and Hindi film catalogue - **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**: Booker winner in 1997 for The God of Small Things, and an essayist who argues with India - **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**: 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**: Brought the princely states into the union; the world's tallest statue honours him - **Sanjeev Kapoor**: The television chef who taught a generation to cook and made 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 Indian fine dining ## Must-try Indian food - **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 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. - **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, 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. - **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, the national reset. - **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. - **Shorshe ilish**: Bengal's hilsa in mustard, the region's most argued-over dish, bones and all. - **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 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. - **Kulfi**: Milk boiled down before freezing, denser than ice cream and slower to melt. - **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. - **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. ## By theme - [Wildlife & safari](https://wimup.com/wildlife.md) - [Street food](https://wimup.com/street-food.md) - [Temples & shrines](https://wimup.com/temples.md) ## Films - [Jaipur Travel Guide](https://wimup.com/watch/jaipur.md), 8:43 - [New Delhi Travel Guide](https://wimup.com/watch/new-delhi.md), 30:00 - [Mumbai Travel Guide](https://wimup.com/watch/mumbai.md), 25:57 - [Udaipur Travel Guide](https://wimup.com/watch/udaipur.md), 10:42 - [Rishikesh Travel Guide](https://wimup.com/watch/rishikesh.md), 23:58 ## FAQs ### 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. 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 and ignore 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, 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 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. ## Related countries - [Japan](https://wimup.com/country/japan.md) - [Vietnam](https://wimup.com/country/vietnam.md) - [All of Asia](https://wimup.com/asia) Part of [Asia](https://wimup.com/asia.md) ## Sources - [Tourism board](https://www.incredibleindia.gov.in/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Currency](https://www.rbi.org.in/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Language](https://www.mha.gov.in/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Emergency](https://112.gov.in/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Visa](https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Getting around](https://indianrailways.gov.in/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Tipping](https://consumeraffairs.nic.in/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Monsoon](https://mausam.imd.gov.in/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Permits](https://boi.gov.in/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - Rankings are Wimup editorial picks. Prices, durations and budgets are editorial estimates, not live quotes; check the official site before you go.