India GOBooks and libraries: India's bookshops, book markets and reading rooms
Old bookshops, Sunday book markets and colonial libraries are good places to get to know an Indian city: family shops trading since the nineteenth century, pavement markets of second-hand books, hill-station libraries that still lend to members. This collection gathers them city by city, with what each one is good for and the few rules worth knowing before you go.
Bookstores, libraries and literary corners across India, for those who travel with a book in hand.
Every place in the collection on the India GO map.
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City by city
Bengaluru
Blossom Book House on Church Street is three floors of new and used books. Select Book Shop, off Brigade Road since 1945, holds more than 9,000 second-hand and rare volumes; you ask, and the conversation does the finding. Champaca in Vasanth Nagar, opened in 2019, is an independent shop with a lending library and a cafe. The red-brick State Central Library by Cubbon Park dates from 1915.
Delhi
Daryaganj Book Market happens on Sundays only: a street fair of cheap textbooks, fiction, art books and rare editions. Bahrisons in Khan Market was opened in 1953 by a refugee of Partition and is still family-run. Midland Book Shop in Aurobindo Place has filled two floors since 1984. The 17th-century library of the Mughal prince Dara Shukoh now houses the Partition Museum.
Kolkata
College Street, Boi Para, is the city's book district, spread across the pavements. Dasgupta & Co., trading there since 1886, is the oldest bookshop still open in Kolkata. Oxford Bookstore has stood on Park Street since 1919 and pours tea at its Cha Bar. Seagull Books in Bhowanipore is the shop of a publisher known for literature in translation.
Varanasi and Vrindavan
For reading about the places you are in: Indica Books in Godowlia (since 1994, branch near Assi) for scripture, philosophy, yoga and Sanskrit studies, and Pilgrims Book House near Durgakund for the Himalaya, Buddhism and rare reprints. In Vrindavan, the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust shop in the Krishna-Balaram Mandir complex stocks Vaishnava literature in dozens of languages.
The hills: Ooty, Mussoorie, Naggar
The Nilgiri Library in Ooty has lent books since 1858–59, in a Victorian Gothic building near Charring Cross; visitors can use the reading room on temporary membership. Higginbothams on Commercial Road is the hill branch of India's oldest bookselling chain, founded in Madras in 1844. The Mussoorie Library, opened in 1843, is for members only, but its facade is the centre of Gandhi Chowk. About 15 minutes by bike from Naggar, Jitters is a cafe with a bookstore.
The coast and the west: Kochi, Goa, Gokarna, Mumbai, Pune
Kochi Books, up a staircase off Princess Street in Fort Kochi, has chosen its stock carefully since 2005. Manali Bookshop in Anjuna, Goa, leans to philosophy, spiritual practice and psychology. Gokarna's Bibliotheque is an old library in a blue building on the hill above the beach. Kitab Khana in Mumbai's Fort and Pagdandi in Pune's Baner, a bookshop-cafe since 2013, complete the list.
✅ Before you go
- Check the day — Daryaganj trades on Sundays only, and the Partition Museum in the Dara Shukoh Library is closed on Mondays.
- Libraries are for members — The old subscription libraries lend to members; as a visitor, ask at the desk about the reading room and keep to library quiet.
- Leave a book — Gokarna's Bibliotheque has a simple custom: if you bring a book, leave it on the shelf.
- Shipping home — Some shops, Kochi Books among them, ship worldwide, which helps when the bag is already full.
❓ FAQ
Where is the cheapest place to buy books in Delhi?
The Sunday book market at Daryaganj, a street fair of second-hand and new books sold at low prices.
What is the oldest bookshop in Kolkata?
Dasgupta & Co. on College Street, trading since 1886 and run by the same family ever since.
Can visitors use the hill-station libraries?
The Nilgiri Library in Ooty offers temporary membership for its reading room. The Mussoorie Library admits non-members only to the foyer.
Where can I buy books on Hinduism and yoga in India?
Indica Books and Pilgrims Book House in Varanasi, and the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust shop in Vrindavan for Vaishnava texts.