South Delhi Cycle Tour of Heritage, Art & Gardens

A bicycle is the right speed for South Delhi

Too far to walk, too interesting to drive. On a cycle you cover the ground between a 700-year-old Sufi settlement and a street-art district in twenty minutes, and you see the city change around you as you go, which is the whole argument for doing it this way.

Nizamuddin

The ride starts in the basti that grew around the dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya, a Sufi saint who died in 1325 and whose shrine has been continuously visited ever since. The lanes are medieval in width and full of rose-petal sellers, kebab shops and the tombs of people who wanted to be buried near him — including the poet Amir Khusrau and the Mughal princess Jahanara.

Qawwali is sung at the shrine on Thursday evenings and has been for centuries.

Lodhi Art District

From there into India's first open-air public art district: the walls of Lodhi Colony, a government housing estate from the 1940s, painted floor to roofline by artists from a couple of dozen countries. More than fifty murals across a few blocks, and they change as new ones go up.

Lodhi Gardens

The tea break is here, among the 15th-century tombs of the Sayyid and Lodhi sultans scattered across ninety acres of lawn. Bara Gumbad, Sheesh Gumbad with its surviving blue tiles, and the octagonal tomb of Mohammed Shah.

What it is like to ride

Mostly flat, mostly on quiet colony roads rather than main arteries, at a pace that anyone who has ridden a bike in the last decade can manage. Cycles and helmets are provided.

Winter mornings are ideal. From April the ride starts early for good reason.

Two options

Join a small group, or book it private, which lets you stop where you want and spend longer at the shrine or the murals.