Delhi, the Himalaya & the North

The plain north of Delhi has been a battlefield for millennia. Kurukshetra in Haryana is the setting of the Mahabharata war, and Panipat saw three decisive battles: Babur's victory in 1526 that founded the Mughal empire, Akbar's in 1556 and the Afghan defeat of the Marathas in 1761. Delhi itself was rebuilt as a capital again and again — by the Delhi Sultanate from the 1190s, whose Qutb Minar still stands, and by Shah Jahan, who built the walled city of Shahjahanabad and its Red Fort in the 1640s. The British moved their capital here from Calcutta in 1911, and Edwin Lutyens' and Herbert Baker's New Delhi was inaugurated in 1931.

Punjab is the homeland of Sikhism, founded by Guru Nanak in the early 16th century; Amritsar grew around the pool and temple laid out by the fourth and fifth Gurus. Maharaja Ranjit Singh built a Sikh empire in the early 19th century that the British annexed in 1849, and at Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh in 1919 British troops fired on an unarmed crowd, killing hundreds. Partition in 1947 cut Punjab in two and sent millions across the new border. A Sikh separatist insurgency in the 1980s brought the army into the Golden Temple in 1984.

The mountains followed other paths. Shimla became the summer capital of British India, while Ladakh long remained a Buddhist kingdom tied to Tibet. The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, whose ruler acceded to India in 1947, has been claimed in full by both India and Pakistan ever since, with wars in 1947, 1965 and 1999; India administers Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, Pakistan administers Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and China administers Aksai Chin, which India claims as part of Ladakh. In 2019 India revoked the state's special status and split it into two union territories. Himachal Pradesh became a state in 1971, and Uttarakhand was carved from Uttar Pradesh in 2000.

The north is a patchwork. Delhi mixes Hindi and Urdu, Punjabi and every other language of India; Punjab is the only Sikh-majority state, and Punjabi turbans, bhangra drumming and the free community kitchen, the langar, found in every gurdwara, define its public face. Baisakhi in April marks both the wheat harvest and the founding of the Khalsa in 1699, and Amritsar lights up for Diwali and Guru Nanak's birthday.

In the hills the culture changes valley by valley. Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are overwhelmingly Hindu and are called Dev Bhoomi, the land of the gods, for their temples and pilgrim routes; Kullu's Dussehra centres on a chariot procession of the deity Raghunath, and Haridwar hosts the Kumbh Mela every twelve years. The Garhwali and Kumaoni people of Uttarakhand and the Pahari speakers of Himachal keep their own dialects, and the Kangra school of miniature painting came from these hills.

The Kashmir valley is mainly Muslim, speaks Kashmiri and has a Sufi shrine tradition and craft skills in pashmina shawls, carpets and papier-mâché; Jammu is mostly Hindu and draws millions of pilgrims to the Vaishno Devi shrine. Ladakh is Tibetan Buddhist in Leh and largely Shia Muslim in Kargil, and its monasteries stage masked cham dances, most famously at the Hemis festival in summer. McLeod Ganj above Dharamsala is the centre of Tibetan exile life.

The Delhi metropolitan area is one of the largest in the world, with over 28 million people spilling into the satellite cities of Gurugram, Noida, Faridabad and Ghaziabad. It is a city of government, services and trade, of long metro commutes and choking winter smog, when crop burning in Punjab and Haryana adds to traffic and industrial fumes. Chandigarh, Le Corbusier's planned city, is the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana.

Punjab and Haryana are India's granary, transformed by the Green Revolution of the 1960s into wheat-and-rice country; Ludhiana, with about 1.6 million people, is Punjab's industrial city, and emigration to Canada, Britain and Australia runs through Punjabi family life. Groundwater depletion, farm debt and drug addiction are the region's current worries.

In the mountains, towns are small: Shimla has about 170,000 people, Dehradun, Uttarakhand's capital, several hundred thousand, and Leh around 30,000. Tourism, apple orchards, hydropower and army postings sustain the hills, and many young men join the army. Srinagar, with over a million people, lives by tourism, handicrafts and government work, under a heavy security presence. Unplanned building on unstable slopes has become a pressing issue after disasters such as the Kedarnath floods of 2013 and the subsidence at Joshimath in 2023.

Punjab gave India its most exported cooking. Winter brings sarson da saag, slow-cooked mustard greens eaten with makki di roti, flat maize bread, and a lump of white butter; Amritsar is known for tandoor-baked kulcha with chickpeas and for its lassi; chole bhature, spiced chickpeas with puffed fried bread, is a Delhi and Punjabi breakfast. The tandoor and dishes such as butter chicken and dal makhani were popularised in Delhi by Punjabi refugees after 1947.

Old Delhi adds the Mughal inheritance: slow-cooked nihari stew and kebabs around the Jama Masjid, fried stuffed parathas in the lanes off Chandni Chowk, and chaat, tangy snacks of potato, chickpea, yoghurt and tamarind chutney. Punjab and Haryana grow much of India's basmati rice.

The hills eat more simply. Himachal's festive dham is a sequence of rice, lentil and bean dishes such as madra, chickpeas in yoghurt, served on leaf plates; Uttarakhand has bal mithai, a brown fudge rolled in white sugar balls from Almora. Kashmir's wazwan is a multi-course feast of mutton cooked by master chefs, including rogan josh, red with Kashmiri chilli, and gushtaba, pounded-meat balls in yoghurt, followed by kahwa, green tea with saffron and almonds, or pink salted noon chai. Ladakh has thukpa noodle soup, tsampa roasted barley flour, butter tea and chhang, barley beer.

Delhi needs several days: the Qutb Minar complex, Humayun's Tomb and the Red Fort, all UNESCO World Heritage Sites; the Jama Masjid and the bazaars of Chandni Chowk; the Sufi shrine of Nizamuddin; and Lutyens' Rajpath avenue, now Kartavya Path, between India Gate and the President's house. Chandigarh's Capitol Complex is part of the UNESCO listing of Le Corbusier's work.

Amritsar's Golden Temple is best seen at dawn or after dark, with Jallianwala Bagh nearby and the flag-lowering ceremony at the Attari–Wagah border with Pakistan every evening.

In Himachal Pradesh, Shimla keeps its Mall Road and colonial churches at the top of the Kalka–Shimla railway, part of the Mountain Railways of India UNESCO site. Manali leads to the Solang valley, the Rohtang Pass and the Atal Tunnel into Lahaul and Spiti's high desert. Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj hold the Tsuglagkhang temple complex and treks to Triund.

In Uttarakhand, Rishikesh has its ashrams, suspension bridges and rafting on the Ganges, and Haridwar its evening aarti at Har Ki Pauri. Beyond lie the Char Dham temples of Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, the Valley of Flowers, Nainital and Mussoorie, and Jim Corbett National Park, founded in 1936 as India's first.

Ladakh's monasteries — Thiksey, Hemis, Lamayuru and cliff-hung Phuktal in Zanskar — rise above Leh Palace, the Nubra valley over the Khardung La and the blue salt lake of Pangong Tso. In the Kashmir valley, Srinagar has Dal Lake's houseboats and shikaras and the Mughal gardens of Shalimar and Nishat, with Gulmarg's ski slopes and Pahalgam's meadows further out.