New Delhi runs on Jio, Airtel and Vi, and your eSIM rides whichever gives the strongest signal. Coverage is excellent, tariffs are very low, and the Metro - one of the largest networks on the planet - carries a signal along its whole length. Our Pune guide covers getting an Indian SIM as a foreigner and the UPI question, and our Mumbai and Hyderabad guides cover Indian city connectivity more broadly. This guide is about the first ninety minutes of your trip, because Delhi is where more visitors to India get separated from their money than anywhere else, and a working phone is most of the defence.
This is not a slur on Delhi. It is a specific, well-documented pattern that operates at the airport and at New Delhi railway station, it targets people who have just landed, and it is entirely avoidable if you know its shape.
The setup is always the same. Someone tells you that where you are going is not available. Your hotel has closed, or burned down, or is overbooked. There are riots in that district. The road is shut. The train is cancelled and you must rebook.
Then comes the solution. A helpful person will take you to a "government tourist office" or an "official booking centre" to sort it out. That office will sell you an expensive tour, an expensive hotel, or a car and driver for a week.
The real India Tourism office is at 88 Janpath. Everything else describing itself in those terms, including several on the same street, is a private travel agency.
At the railway station, the variant is being told the international tourist booking office has moved, or that your e-ticket needs validating somewhere else. It has not, and it does not.
Your phone breaks the whole thing:
- Call your hotel yourself, on your own phone, from where you stand. Not a number someone hands you.
- Have the address and a map already downloaded, so you can see whether you are being driven the right way.
- Use a ride app - Uber and Ola both work from the airport and have designated pickup zones - or the official prepaid taxi counter inside the terminal.
- Book an airport transfer with your hotel in advance, which removes the entire encounter.
- Do not hand your phone or your booking to anyone, and do not get into a vehicle that is not the one you ordered.
The Airport Express Metro runs from Terminal 3 to New Delhi station in about twenty minutes, is cheap, clean, and involves no conversation with anybody. For many arrivals it is simply the best answer.
Say no and keep walking. Nobody at an Indian airport has a legitimate reason to redirect your accommodation.
Delhi is not dangerous in the way this section might imply - violent crime against tourists is rare, and the overwhelming majority of visits are entirely fine. This is a commercial hustle, and the cost of falling for it is money and a ruined first week rather than anything worse.
Separate from the air quality Delhi is famous for, and more disruptive to actual travel.
Dense fog settles over the plain in late December and January, often for days at a time, and it is thick enough to close visibility to a few metres.
Flights are delayed and cancelled in large numbers, and Delhi is the hub for northern India, so the disruption spreads.
Trains run hours late, routinely, in the same period - the Delhi to Agra and Delhi to Varanasi services in particular.
This is normal, not exceptional. If you are travelling in the last week of December or in January, build genuine slack into connections and do not book a tight onward flight.
Air quality is worst in the same season, when crop burning, cold air and traffic combine. If you have a respiratory condition, this is the period to avoid and a fine-particle mask is not theatre.
October, November, February and March avoid all of it and are the best months to be here.
The city is comprehensively covered, and the Metro has signal throughout, including the deeper underground sections.
Inside the monuments - the Red Fort's interiors, the Qutub complex, the stepwells - coverage is fine outdoors and patchy in stone.
Old Delhi's lanes around Chandni Chowk are dense and tall, and GPS drifts badly between the buildings. Download the area offline; the navigation failure there is positional rather than a lack of signal.
During Republic Day, in late January, central Delhi sees extensive road closures and heavy security around Rajpath, and mobile services have occasionally been restricted in specific areas around major events. Plan around the date rather than through it.
On the Agra and Jaipur road trips, coverage follows the expressway and thins on the older routes.
Delhi Metro is among the largest networks in the world, and it is the single best thing about getting around the city.
It is clean, cheap, air-conditioned and signposted in English, with security screening at every entrance.
The first carriage of every train is reserved for women, marked in pink, and it is enforced.
It reaches the airport, Old Delhi, Connaught Place, Hauz Khas and Gurugram - most of what a visitor wants.
Buy a tourist card for unlimited travel over one or three days, or a stored-value smart card.
What it does not solve is the last kilometre in Old Delhi, where you walk, take a cycle rickshaw, or sit in traffic.
Autos and ride apps fill the rest. Use the apps rather than negotiating, which removes both the haggling and the "meter is broken" conversation.
- Uber and Ola, and Rapido for motorbikes.
- The Delhi Metro app or a general transit app.
- Maps with the Old Delhi area downloaded offline, for the GPS-drift reason above.
- An air quality app between November and January.
- A translation app is useful but rarely essential - English is very widely spoken in Delhi, alongside Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi.
Indira Gandhi International (DEL) is about 16 km southwest of the centre and is one of the busiest airports in the world, with Terminal 3 handling international flights.
The Airport Express Metro is the cleanest arrival: twenty minutes to New Delhi station, cheap, and no negotiation.
Uber and Ola work from marked zones, and the official prepaid taxi counter inside the terminal is the traditional safe option.
Most nationalities need a visa, and India's e-visa system is the usual route - arrange it well before travelling.
For Agra, the Gatimaan and Shatabdi trains take around two hours from Hazrat Nizamuddin and New Delhi stations and are far better than driving.
A generous plan, and it will cost you very little. Maps, ride apps and translation run continuously, you will want offline copies for Old Delhi, and on arrival day a working connection is the single most useful thing you own. Hotel wifi is good.
Modest. Shoulders, arms and knees covered for both men and women is the sensible default, and required at mosques and gurdwaras.
A scarf for women, for head covering at religious sites. The Jama Masjid and Bangla Sahib both require it, and coverings are usually available.
Shoes that come off easily, since you will remove them constantly.
Layers in winter. December and January are genuinely cold, and Indian buildings are not heated.
The lightest possible clothing in May and June, when 45C is ordinary and the heat is dangerous rather than uncomfortable.
A fine-particle mask if you are here in the winter smog season.
Humayun's Tomb in early light, the Mughal garden tomb that was the template for the Taj Mahal, and the least crowded of Delhi's three UNESCO sites.
The Qutub Minar, the 73-metre victory tower from 1193, with the iron pillar that has not rusted in over 1,600 years standing in the courtyard beside it.
The Red Fort, from the Chandni Chowk approach.
Jama Masjid's courtyard at prayer time, from the southern minaret if it is open.
Chandni Chowk's lanes, especially the spice market at Khari Baoli, which is the largest in Asia and will make you cough.
Bangla Sahib gurdwara, with its golden dome and enormous free kitchen - the langar serves tens of thousands daily and visitors are welcome to help.
Lodhi Gardens in the afternoon, where the tombs sit in a park full of joggers and parakeets.
Agrasen ki Baoli, a deep stepwell dropped into the middle of the modern city.
Delhi has three UNESCO World Heritage Sites - the Red Fort, Humayun's Tomb and the Qutub complex - which very few cities manage.
The iron pillar at Qutub is around 1,600 years old and has barely rusted, a metallurgical puzzle that has been studied for over a century. The answer involves a protective phosphate film, and it is still remarkable.
There have been many Delhis. The city is conventionally described as having been built and destroyed seven times, with each ruling dynasty founding its own capital - the ruins of most of them are still scattered across the modern city.
New Delhi is a different city from Delhi, technically. It is the planned imperial capital laid out by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker from 1911, and it sits inside the larger, much older Delhi.
Chandni Chowk was designed by a princess. Jahanara Begum, Shah Jahan's daughter, laid out the boulevard with a canal running down its centre, reflecting moonlight - which is what the name means.
And the Bangla Sahib kitchen runs around the clock, staffed by volunteers, feeding anyone who comes regardless of faith or means.
Republic Day, 26 January, with the parade down Kartavya Path - spectacular, and accompanied by extensive road closures and security across central Delhi for days beforehand.
Diwali, in October or November, when the city is lit and also at its most polluted from fireworks.
Holi, in March, which in Delhi is enthusiastic and messy and best experienced somewhere you have been invited.
Independence Day, 15 August, with the prime minister's address from the Red Fort.
October to March is the season, minus the fog and smog weeks of late December and January.
The love: Delhi has more genuine history per square kilometre than almost anywhere - Mughal tombs, Sultanate ruins, an imperial capital and a modern metropolis layered on top of each other, with three World Heritage Sites among them. The food is superb at every price point, from Chandni Chowk's parathas to some of India's best restaurants. The Metro makes it far more navigable than its reputation suggests. And it is the natural base for Agra, Jaipur and the north.
The complaints are consistent and substantial. The arrival experience is genuinely predatory and colours many first impressions. The air quality in winter is among the worst in the world. The summer heat is dangerous. The traffic is exhausting. The scale means long journeys between sights. And the hassle - being approached, quoted, redirected - wears people down in a way that is hard to convey until it happens for the fourth time in an afternoon.
Come in February or October, take the Airport Express in, book your first night's transfer through the hotel, and give Humayun's Tomb an early morning to itself.
The pattern is that someone tells you your hotel is closed, overbooked or unreachable, then offers to take you to a "government tourist office" that sells overpriced tours and accommodation. The genuine India Tourism office is at 88 Janpath; the others are private agencies. The defence is your own phone - call the hotel yourself, have the address and an offline map ready, and use a ride app or the official prepaid counter. The Airport Express Metro avoids the encounter entirely.
Yes, throughout, including underground. The Metro is the best way to move around the city, it is signposted in English, and the first carriage of each train is reserved for women. The place your navigation fails is Old Delhi's lanes, where GPS drifts between tall buildings - download that area offline.
May and June, when it reaches 45C, and late December to January, when dense fog cancels flights and delays trains for days and the air quality is at its worst. October, November, February and March are the good months.
Not for a short trip. The registration process facing foreigners is onerous, as our Pune guide documents. And Delhi is the one Indian airport where arriving already connected has a value beyond convenience: everything in the first section above depends on being able to call your hotel and read your own map before you speak to anybody.
