Akshardham Temple, Delhi: Tickets, Timings and the Bag Rule

Start here, because it is the single most common way a visit goes wrong.

Phones, cameras, bags and most electronics are not permitted inside. There are cloakrooms and they are free, but at a busy hour the deposit queue and the collection queue together can cost you the better part of an hour, and the security check is thorough.

The practical answer is to carry almost nothing. Leave the bag at your hotel, bring a wallet and a bottle of water, and accept that you will not photograph any of it. There are official photographs on sale and there is no way around the rule, which is applied to everyone without exception.

If you are arriving straight from a station or an airport with luggage, do not. Come another day.

Akshardham opened in 2005 and is among the largest Hindu temples in the world. The central monument is cut from around 6,000 tonnes of Rajasthani pink sandstone and Italian Carrara marble, and carries roughly 20,000 carved figures of deities, saints and musicians. It was built without structural steel, in the traditional manner, which is the fact worth carrying around the building with you.

It is new, and some visitors arrive slightly suspicious of that. It is worth setting aside: the carving is genuine hand-work at a scale nobody has attempted in centuries, and whatever you think of the result, the craft in it is not in doubt.

The complex also holds an exhibition hall, a boat ride through Indian history, a musical fountain, and large formal gardens. The temple itself is free; the exhibitions and the evening water show are ticketed and bought on site.

The Sahaj Anand water show runs in the evening after sunset and is the reason many people come. It uses fountains, light, projection and fire across a stepwell-shaped arena, and it is among the better spectacles of its kind in Asia. It is ticketed separately and the timing moves with the season, so check on the day rather than planning around a fixed hour.

That gives you two sensible shapes for a visit. Afternoon into evening: arrive around four, see the monument and an exhibition, and stay for the show. Or morning: arrive at opening, take the monument and the gardens unhurried, and be gone before the afternoon crowds.

Either way, three hours is the floor, and closer to four with the show.

Akshardham Metro on the Blue Line is a few minutes' walk from the gate. Closed Mondays.