Flavours of India: a 10-Day Food Tour of Delhi, Amritsar, Lucknow and Varanasi

Arrive in Delhi

Your driver meets you at Delhi airport and takes you to your hotel. Rest after the flight and drink plenty of bottled water: the next nine days involve a great deal of eating, and it pays to arrive rested and hydrated.

In the evening, have a light first dinner nearby. Your guide can suggest a restaurant serving dal makhani and butter chicken, the dishes Delhi's Punjabi kitchens made famous around the world, so you have something to compare with Amritsar later in the trip. Many of Delhi's best-loved Punjabi restaurants were opened by families who came from Lahore and Peshawar after Partition in 1947, bringing the tandoor with them.

If you are feeling lively, the market area of Bengali Market, near Connaught Place, is known for its sweet shops and chaat, and is an easy first taste of Delhi street food. A few tips for the days ahead: eat at busy places where food is cooked hot in front of you, start with small portions, and pace yourself. Your guides will tell you what to try and what to skip.

• ArrivalMeet and greet and private transfer
• EveningLight Punjabi dinner near your hotel

OvernightDelhi, 3 nights.

Old Delhi food walk and Humayun's Tomb

Ride a cycle-rickshaw into Chandni Chowk with your food guide. This was the grand avenue of Shah Jahan's 17th-century capital, and its lanes have fed the city ever since. Over about three hours, taste stuffed parathas fried in ghee in Paranthe Wali Gali, crisp jalebis from a stall that has stood for generations, spicy chaat such as aloo tikki and papdi chaat, and kebabs near the Jama Masjid, where Karim's has served Mughlai food since 1913. Your guide picks busy stalls with food cooked hot in front of you. Come hungry and skip breakfast.

Walk past the spice sacks of Khari Baoli, Delhi's great wholesale spice market, where the smell of chillies makes everyone sneeze, and the sweet shops selling Diwali-style mithai all year. Look for daulat ki chaat in winter, a cloud of whipped, saffron-tinted milk that melts on the tongue.

In the afternoon, walk it off at Humayun's Tomb, the Mughal garden tomb that inspired the Taj Mahal and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its quiet gardens are a good place to slow down after the noise of the old city.

• MorningOld Delhi food walk: parathas, jalebi, chaat and kebabs
• Late morningKhari Baoli spice market
• AfternoonHumayun's Tomb

OvernightDelhi.

Cooking in a Delhi home

Join a family in their home kitchen for a hands-on cooking class. Learn to make dal, a seasonal vegetable sabzi, soft rotis and a Punjabi curry, and how Indian cooks build flavour by tempering whole spices in hot oil or ghee, the tadka, before adding them to a dish. You will learn which spices go in whole and which ground, how to roast and grind your own garam masala, and how to roll a round roti, which takes most people a few attempts.

Then sit down together and eat what you have cooked. It is also a chance to talk about everyday life, festivals and family food traditions in a Delhi home. Tell us about any dietary needs and the family will adapt the menu.

In the afternoon, browse INA Market, where Delhi's cooks buy spices, fresh produce and specialist ingredients from across India. It is a good place to buy whole spices, tea and pickles to take home; whole spices keep their flavour far longer than ground. Across the road, Dilli Haat has craft stalls and food counters serving dishes from different states, such as momos from the North-East.

• MorningCooking class in a Delhi home
• LunchEat what you cook with the family
• AfternoonINA Market for spices and produce, and Dilli Haat

OvernightDelhi.

Train to Amritsar and the Golden Temple at night

Board the morning Shatabdi express to Amritsar, with breakfast and snacks served at your seat as the Punjab countryside slides by: wheat and mustard fields in winter, tube wells, brick kilns and gurdwaras with their white domes. You can also fly in about an hour and a quarter.

Check in to your hotel in Amritsar and rest. In the evening, walk with your guide to the Golden Temple, the Harmandir Sahib, the holiest shrine of Sikhism, lit up over its sacred pool. Its upper storeys were covered in gilded copper under Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the early 19th century. Cover your head (scarves are provided), remove your shoes and socks, and wash your feet in the shallow channel at the entrance. Walk clockwise round the pool as hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib play. Accept the kada prasad, a warm sweet of wheat flour, ghee and sugar, in cupped hands.

For dinner, try one of Amritsar's famous dhabas for dal makhani, tandoori roti and a tall glass of lassi topped with a slab of cream. Amritsari fish, river fish fried in a spiced gram flour batter, is another local speciality.

• MorningShatabdi train or flight to Amritsar
• EveningThe Golden Temple lit at night, then dinner at a dhaba

OvernightAmritsar, 2 nights.

Langar, kulcha and the border ceremony

Return to the Golden Temple in the morning and step into the langar, the community kitchen that serves free vegetarian meals to tens of thousands of people every day, and over 100,000 on busy days. Everyone, whatever their faith or status, sits on the floor in long rows and eats the same simple meal of dal, a vegetable dish, rotis and kheer, an idea that goes back to the first Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak. Help the volunteers roll rotis or chop vegetables, watch the huge cauldrons and the roti machines at work, then share the meal with everyone else.

Later, try Amritsari kulcha, crisp stuffed flatbread baked in a tandoor and served with spicy chole and a dab of butter, at one of the city's best-known kulcha shops, followed by a lassi. Visit Jallianwala Bagh, the memorial garden, on the way, where British troops fired on a peaceful crowd in April 1919; bullet marks are still visible in the walls.

In the late afternoon, drive to the Attari border for the flag-lowering ceremony, scaled down since 2025 with the gates closed. Back in Amritsar, try phirni, a set rice pudding served in clay bowls.

• MorningVolunteer and eat at the Golden Temple langar
• LunchAmritsari kulcha and chole
• AfternoonJallianwala Bagh
• Late afternoonAttari border ceremony

OvernightAmritsar.

To the city of kebabs

If your flight is late enough, go back to the Golden Temple at dawn, when it is at its most peaceful and the morning hymns echo across the water. Then fly to Lucknow, usually with a change in Delhi. It is mostly a travel day, so keep lunch light.

Lucknow was the capital of the Nawabs of Awadh, whose courts in the 18th and 19th centuries became famous for poetry, music, good manners and above all refined cooking. Awadhi cooks perfected slow cooking in sealed pots, dum pukht, and kebabs of minced meat so fine they barely need chewing.

In the evening, walk the lanes of Aminabad with your guide for galouti kebabs, so tender they were said to have been created for a toothless Nawab, eaten with sheermal, a saffron-scented flatbread, or a soft paratha. Look for basket chaat, a crisp potato basket filled with chickpeas, yoghurt and chutneys. Finish with a cup of chai. Vegetarians are well looked after in Lucknow too.

• Early morningOptional dawn visit to the Golden Temple
• DayFlights from Amritsar to Lucknow
• EveningGalouti kebabs and sheermal in Aminabad

OvernightLucknow, 2 nights.

The Bara Imambara and Awadhi kitchens

See the Bara Imambara in the morning, a vast hall built in 1784 by Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula, partly as a famine-relief project to give work to his people. Its central hall has a vaulted roof and no supporting beams. Climb up into the Bhool Bhulaiya, its maze of narrow passages, said to number more than a thousand, then visit the Rumi Darwaza gateway next door. Your guide will show you the tricks of its acoustics, where a whisper carries along the walls. Shoes come off in the mosque within the complex.

Spend the afternoon in Chowk, the old city, with a food guide. Taste kakori kebabs, nihari, the slow-cooked overnight stew, eaten with kulcha, and dum-cooked Awadhi biryani, sealed in a pot with dough and cooked gently in its own steam, lighter and more fragrant than other Indian biryanis. In winter, look for makhan malai, Lucknow's version of the airy saffron milk froth served at dawn.

Finish with kulfi, rich frozen milk flavoured with saffron and pistachio, often served with falooda noodles. Chowk is also the place to see chikankari, Lucknow's delicate white-on-white embroidery.

• MorningBara Imambara, the maze and the Rumi Darwaza
• AfternoonFood walk in Chowk: kebabs, nihari, biryani and kulfi

OvernightLucknow.

The road to Varanasi

Drive east to Varanasi on the highway across the flat, fertile plains of Uttar Pradesh, past sugar cane, wheat and mango orchards and small market towns. Your driver will stop for tea and for lunch on the way. Depending on the route, you can break the journey at Jaunpur, a medieval sultanate capital with the 15th-century Atala Masjid and a 16th-century Mughal bridge over the Gomti river. Jaunpur is also known for imarti, a jalebi-like sweet made from lentil batter.

Check in near the ghats. The lanes of the old city are too narrow for cars, so the last stretch may be on foot or by cycle rickshaw, with help for your luggage.

In the evening, walk down to Dashashwamedh Ghat for the evening Ganga aarti, when priests offer fire and flowers to the river to the sound of bells, conch shells and chanting. Arrive early for a place on the steps, or watch from a boat. Afterwards, try a cooling glass of thandai, milk flavoured with almonds, fennel and rose.

• DayDrive to Varanasi, with an optional stop in Jaunpur
• EveningThe Ganga aarti at Dashashwamedh Ghat

OvernightVaranasi, 2 nights, near the ghats.

Street snacks and the Ganges

Take a boat on the Ganges at sunrise as pilgrims bathe and pray on the ghats, washermen beat clothes on the stones and smoke rises from the cremation ghat at Manikarnika, where cameras must go away.

Then walk the old city with your food guide for kachori sabzi, the classic Varanasi breakfast of puffed fried bread with spiced potato, followed by hot jalebi; tamatar chaat, a tangy, spiced tomato dish found only here; lassi in clay cups, thick and topped with cream; and Banarasi paan, betel leaf folded around sweet fillings. In winter, look for malaiyo, a light saffron milk froth sold only on early mornings, and chura matar, flattened rice cooked with green peas. Look out too for launglata, a sweet pastry sealed with a clove.

The afternoon is free to rest or wander the ghats. If you have room for more, ask your guide about a simple Banarasi thali for dinner, or visit the Kashi Vishwanath corridor in the evening.

• SunriseBoat on the Ganges
• MorningFood walk: kachori, chaat, lassi and paan
• AfternoonFree

OvernightVaranasi.

Fly onwards

Depending on your flight time, have a last kachori breakfast or a final walk on the ghats, and pick up any tea, spices or sweets to take home; dry sweets travel better than milk-based ones.

Your driver transfers you to Varanasi airport, about 25 km from the city, and you fly to Delhi or Mumbai for your international flight home. Allow at least four hours between flights, and keep any pickles or liquids in your checked luggage.

• MorningLast breakfast or walk on the ghats
• DepartureTransfer to Varanasi airport