What to Discover Before Your Trip

The story of Prince Rama, his wife Sita, and their struggle against the demon Ravana. A tale of duty, devotion, and the ideal ruler. Rama is an avatar of Vishnu and is revered across the entire country.

How to explore it: R. K. Narayan's short retelling is the easiest first pass; for the full poem, look for Arshia Sattar's abridged translation of Valmiki.

Part of the Mahabharata, but set apart as its own text. A dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna on the eve of battle: about duty, about acting without attachment to results, about the nature of the soul. The most quoted text in India: everyone knows it, from the rickshaw driver to the university professor.

How to explore it: Many editions and commentaries exist, each reflecting a different tradition, from devotional Vaishnava readings to meditative and philosophical ones. Pick an edition whose voice resonates with you, or read two side by side to hear the same verses through different lenses.

The philosophical foundation of Hinduism. Reflections on the nature of reality, the soul, and the Absolute. Denser than the epics, but extraordinarily deep.

How to explore it: Start with a shorter one, the Isha Upanishad or the Katha Upanishad. Look for an edition with commentary; the verses are compact, but the meaning unfolds through explanation.

The foundational text of yoga. 196 aphorisms on what yoga is, how the mind works, and how liberation is reached. If you practice, or are simply curious, this one is essential.

How to explore it: Read it alongside a commentary. The sutras are so compressed that the bare text is almost unusable; the commentary is where the meaning lives.

Autobiography of a Yogi (Paramahansa Yogananda). A classic of twentieth-century spiritual literature. The story of the Indian yogi who brought yoga to the West. It reads like an adventure novel but changes how you see reality. One of those books that leaves the world looking different afterward. ![cover-autobiography-of-a-yogi]

The Journey Home (Radhanath Swami). An American hippie in the 1970s sets out to look for truth through Europe, the Middle East, and into India. A search story that ends in a Krishna temple. Honest and inspiring, and a book that can push you toward your own trip to India. ![cover-the-journey-home]

Be Here Now (Ram Dass). A Harvard professor of psychology travels to India, meets a guru, and is permanently changed. The manifesto of the sixties' spiritual revolution. ![cover-be-here-now]

Inner Engineering (Sadhguru). A modern Indian mystic explaining yoga for the twenty-first century. Practical, humorous, stripped of unnecessary mysticism. A good entry point for skeptics. ![cover-inner-engineering]

Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse). Not an Indian author, but a book about India and the search for the self. The story of a contemporary of the Buddha who looks for enlightenment on his own terms. Short, beautiful, deep. An essential classic. ![cover-siddhartha]

Karma (Sadhguru). Sadhguru's second book for anyone who liked Inner Engineering. Karma here is neither punishment nor a ledger of merits but memory carried by body and mind, and it can be unloaded. Conversational, full of anecdotes, free of esoteric fog. If the Isha centre near Coimbatore is on your route, this is a direct introduction to what is taught there. ![cover-karma-sadhguru]

Raja Yoga (Swami Vivekananda). Lectures given in New York by the man who brought Hinduism to the West a generation before Yogananda. Yoga here is not gymnastics but a science of the mind: breath, concentration, meditation, with Vivekananda's own translation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and commentary attached. Strict, lucid, free of mystical haze. After it, Belur Math and the temple at Dakshineswar in the Kolkata section stop being mere pins on a map. ![cover-raja-yoga]

Be As You Are (Ramana Maharshi). The teaching of Ramana Maharshi, gathered by David Godman from conversations at the ashram below Arunachala hill. There is a single method: the question who am I, turned inward, with no mythology, rituals or compulsory gods. The simplest of the great teachers and, for that reason, one of the hardest. For those drawn to silence rather than bells, and good preparation for Tiruvannamalai. ![cover-be-as-you-are]

The Science of Self-Realization (Srila Prabhupada). Interviews, articles and talks by Srila Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON: on yoga and meditation, on karma and rebirth, on how real knowledge differs from mere learning. The conversational format makes bhakti philosophy approachable, with questions from journalists, scientists and students and short, direct answers. A good entry point if the Gita itself still feels like too big a first step. ![cover-science-of-self-realization]

Bhagavad-gītā As It Is (Srila Prabhupada). Probably the most widely distributed edition of the Gita: a commentary in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, with every verse given in Sanskrit, then word by word, then in translation, then explained. The emphasis is on bhakti, devotion to Krishna, and that emphasis colours every commentary. Read it slowly, a chapter a day, going back to the word-for-word gloss: that is how the text opens up best. ![cover-bhagavad-gita-as-it-is]

The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Mahatma Gandhi). The autobiography of the man who played a central role in India's independence and redefined what political protest could be. Gandhi describes how his ideas of non-violence, civil resistance, and personal responsibility took shape, not as theory, but through concrete decisions, mistakes, and choices. A book about how private life, moral principles, and political action can become a single whole. ![cover-my-experiments-with-truth]

The Discovery of India (Jawaharlal Nehru). The first prime minister of independent India wrote this book in prison. A sweeping, affectionate, deeply informed view of the country's history and culture from the inside. A classic. ![cover-the-discovery-of-india]

Nine Lives (William Dalrymple). Nine portraits of people for whom faith is not a museum but a job and a fate: a Jain nun, a theyyam dancer from Kerala, a bronze caster of gods from Swamimalai, a Baul singer from Bengal, a tantric who lives in the cremation ground at Tarapith, a Sufi wanderer. Dalrymple mostly steps aside and lets them talk, so the India of living religion emerges from voices rather than from chapters about gods. It reads like a book of short stories, except that all of it is true. Possibly the best preparation for any temple or shrine in this guide. ![cover-nine-lives]

Inglorious Empire (Shashi Tharoor). What British rule cost India, from ruined weaving to famines and railways built for extraction. The book grew out of Tharoor's famous Oxford Union speech and keeps that speech's edge: short, angry and carefully documented. A useful counterweight to the Raj nostalgia that still lingers in films and hotel decor. Forts, palaces and colonial boulevards read more soberly after it. ![cover-inglorious-empire]

India After Gandhi (Ramachandra Guha). How a country everyone expected to fall apart held together after 1947: Partition, the absorption of the princely states, the language states, wars, the Emergency and on to the present day. Guha writes as a historian rather than a politician, which makes the book a natural sequel to Nehru's The Discovery of India. Long, but even-paced and surprisingly gripping. The one volume to read if you want to understand the arguments still going on around you. ![cover-india-after-gandhi]

The Argumentative Indian (Amartya Sen). A Nobel laureate in economics on India's long habit of argument: from the dialogues of the Upanishads and the Buddhist councils under Ashoka to the debates at Akbar's court and today's television shouting matches. Essays on pluralism, on why Indian culture was never a single thing, and on why everyone here argues with everyone, gods included. Academic in places, but written with humour and affection. It explains the verbal energy that will meet you in any train compartment or tea stall. ![cover-the-argumentative-indian]

Indian Mythology (Devdutt Pattanaik). The clearest way into the pantheon: who is related to whom, why Ganesha has an elephant's head, why Shiva wears a snake and how Vishnu fits into ten avatars. Pattanaik retells the myths plainly, with his own line drawings and tables, and keeps reminding you that behind every story sits an idea, not just an adventure. A good companion to the catalogue of gods in the Hinduism section. ![cover-indian-mythology-pattanaik]

The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy). A story about a family in Kerala: twins, childhood trauma, and forbidden love. The book shows how the caste system, social rules, and unspoken prohibitions break people's lives. Slow and heavy, but gripping. What matters here is not the events but how the characters live through them: childhood wounds, taboos, losses, and the way the past quietly shapes everything that follows. ![cover-the-god-of-small-things]

Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts). A novel about a fugitive who hides in India and starts a new life in the slums of Mumbai. It has everything: mafia, love, philosophy, street life, the contrast of poverty and spirituality. Long and occasionally naive, but genuinely addictive. A vivid rendering of bustling, living India. ![cover-shantaram]

Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie). The story of a generation of children born at the moment India became independent, each of them endowed with special powers. Through magical realism, Rushdie tells a story about politics, history, and the fate of a country. Dense and layered, more about ideas than plot. Pick it up if you're in the mood for something intellectual. ![cover-midnights-children]

A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth). A vast family novel set in 1950s India: marriages, pressure from relatives, caste, religion, politics, and tradition. The surface plot is the search for a husband for a young woman, but behind it unfolds a panoramic portrait of Indian society. Essential for understanding how everyday Indian life and thinking actually work.

The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga). The story of a young man from a poor village who becomes a driver for wealthy people and sees the seamy side of Indian society. Sharp, ironic, cynical: a book about class inequality, corruption, and the price of "making it." Easy to read, but it leaves a strong aftertaste. ![cover-the-white-tiger]

A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry). Bombay in the mid-seventies, under the Emergency. A widow, a student from a hill town and two tailors, uncle and nephew fresh from the village, end up sharing one cramped flat. Politics walks in through the back door, and people keep on sewing, cooking and laughing anyway. Possibly the most humane of the big Indian novels: after it, Mumbai stops being scenery and becomes a fate. ![cover-a-fine-balance]

Sacred Games (Vikram Chandra). A Sikh police inspector, Sartaj Singh, and the gangster Ganesh Gaitonde, whose lives lock together over a single phone call. Close to a thousand pages of Mumbai: cops, the underworld, Bollywood, slums and politics, all of it breathing, sweating and haggling. A long read that earns its length; the city is recognisable on every corner afterwards. Pair it with the Netflix series once the book is done.

The Namesake (Jhumpa Lahiri). A Bengali couple leaves Calcutta for Massachusetts, and their son ends up with the pet name Gogol, after the writer whose book once saved his father's life. A quiet, short novel about how a name drags a fate behind it and how home stays home across an ocean. Calcutta appears in visits, but with the smell of its kitchens and the sound of relatives talking over one another. Mira Nair filmed it in 2006. ![cover-the-namesake-film]

Sea of Poppies (Amitav Ghosh). The 1830s: poppy fields line the Ganges and the opium factory at Ghazipur feeds an empire. Aboard the schooner Ibis, a widow from the poppy fields, a bankrupt raja, an American sailor and a French orphan are all bound for Mauritius. An adventure novel that explains colonial economics better than a textbook and turns the pidgin of lascars and babus into music. First book of the Ibis trilogy. ![cover-sea-of-poppies]

Life of Pi (Yann Martel). A boy from Pondicherry grows up in the family zoo and manages to be a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim at once, to the bewilderment of all three of his teachers. The first third is the quiet French quarter, the zoo and arguments about God; then comes the shipwreck and a lifeboat shared with a tiger. A Booker winner and one of the warmest books about faith that never preaches. Ang Lee's film follows the same road.

Malgudi Days (R. K. Narayan). Stories from Malgudi, an invented town in the South where a bazaar astrologer, a postman, a pickpocket and a stray dog all get their turn. No exotica, just warm everyday life with its small schemes and grievances, roughly what you see from a bus window somewhere between Mysore and Madurai. Short, kind, with something of Chekhov's smile. The easiest way into Narayan, and into the India that is not on any postcard. ![cover-malgudi-days]

The Inheritance of Loss (Kiran Desai). Kalimpong, a hill town near Darjeeling, in the eighties: a crumbling house holds a retired judge, raised by the British to despise himself, his teenage granddaughter and the cook, whose son is washing dishes in New York. Outside, the Gorkha insurgency is gathering, and the mist over Kanchenjunga becomes part of the plot. A Booker winner and a precise book about how the colonial past never left, it just moved into manners and grudges. ![cover-the-inheritance-of-loss]

Untouchable (Mulk Raj Anand). One day in the life of Bakha, a young sweeper in a Punjab cantonment town: the morning rounds, an accidental touch in the street, a crowd's fury, and by evening Gandhi speaking at a rally. A short novel, after which the word caste stops being a textbook abstraction and becomes something felt in the body. Published in 1935 with a preface by E. M. Forster, and it has lost none of its force. ![cover-untouchable]

3 Idiots (2009). Two friends go looking for a third, a genius who disappeared after college. A comedy about the education system, parental pressure, and the right to be yourself. Cult classic, the perfect first Bollywood film. ![cover-3-idiots]

PK (2014). An alien lands in India and tries to make sense of human religions. Satire on religious fanaticism, bold for Indian cinema and somehow still kind. ![cover-pk]

RRR (2022). Two national heroes, British colonizers, epic action. A Telugu blockbuster that conquered the world. Three hours of adrenaline with dances and fights. ![cover-rrr]

Baahubali 1 & 2 (2015, 2017). India's answer to The Lord of the Rings: a sprawling epic with battles, palace intrigue, and a struggle for the throne. The question "Why did Kattappa kill Baahubali?" became a national obsession between installments.

Lagaan (2001). A small Indian village takes on British colonizers… at cricket. The stakes: taxes, survival, dignity. Part sports drama, part musical, part story of resistance. Oscar-nominated. ![cover-lagaan]

Monsoon Wedding (2001). Not a Bollywood musical but an independent film. A big family gathers for a wedding in Delhi, and behind the festive bustle, old grievances and secrets surface. Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice. ![cover-monsoon-wedding]

Laapataa Ladies (2024). Two brides are accidentally swapped on a train journey. Sounds like farce, but under the comedy is a sharp conversation about the status of women in rural India. Directed by Kiran Rao. India's Oscar submission. Fresh, warm, and smart. ![cover-laapataa-ladies]

Gandhi (1982). Three hours of the independence story, from a train in South Africa to the Salt March and Partition, with Ben Kingsley in the title role. Eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor. It simplifies, as every epic does, but it gives you the skeleton of events on which Gandhi's own autobiography and Guha's histories later settle. Watch it before Delhi and Ahmedabad: Raj Ghat and the Sabarmati ashram stop being empty dots afterwards. ![cover-gandhi-1982]

The Lunchbox (2013). A dabbawala's mistake sends a housewife's lunchbox not to her husband but to a lonely clerk on the edge of retirement, and a correspondence begins on notes tucked under the lid. A quiet film without songs or dances, with Irrfan Khan, local trains, rain and the smell of curry rising from thousands of tiffins. Possibly the best first film about Mumbai: the city roars outside the window while quiet people live inside it. You will want to find Churchgate station at noon afterwards and watch the dabbawalas at work. ![cover-the-lunchbox]

Masaan (2015). Varanasi without the postcard glow: a boy from a family that has tended the pyres at Manikarnika for generations falls for a girl from a higher caste, while another young woman is caught by the police in a hotel room and has her life wrecked by shame. Caste, love, corruption and a river that carries everything away. Shot on the real ghats, which read differently afterwards: not as scenery but as somebody's work and somebody's fate. A Cannes debut, quiet and very strong. ![cover-masaan]

Queen (2013). Rani from Delhi is told the wedding is off the day before it happens, and decides to go on the honeymoon anyway: alone, to Paris and Amsterdam. A comedy about a young woman choosing for the first time what to eat and who to talk to, and about the person who grows out of that. Kangana Ranaut in one of her best roles, and one of India's most loved films about a woman travelling on her own. Punjabi Delhi, with its wedding marquees and enormous families, is shown with real tenderness. ![cover-queen-2013]

Dil Chahta Hai (2001). Three friends just out of college, a road trip to Goa and Chapora fort, which has been called the Dil Chahta Hai fort ever since. Farhan Akhtar's debut, and the film that started modern urban Indian cinema: no village, no villains, just irony, friendship and the first adult losses. Aamir Khan is young and flippant here, which is a pleasure in itself. In Goa, climb Chapora at sunset and you will understand what all the nostalgia is about. ![cover-dil-chahta-hai]

Gully Boy (2019). A young man from Dharavi who raps between shifts as a driver and college classes, and the road from a cramped room to the stage. Zoya Akhtar built the story around real Mumbai rappers, and the street here is the real street: alleys, rooftops, trains and the wall between a rich house and the slum. Class, ambition and young India with no fairy tale attached. The soundtrack deserves a separate listen, ideally on headphones on the way into Mumbai. ![cover-gully-boy]

Kantara (2022). A village in the forests of Tulu Nadu, on the Karnataka coast, and the bhoota kola ritual in which a dancer becomes the voice of the land's guardian spirit. Around it, a fight over the forest between the village, the landlord and a forest officer; beneath it, an old bargain between people and gods. The film India talked about all year: made in Kannada, with real ritual performers, and the final minutes are best seen knowing nothing in advance. This is exactly the coast the guide follows through Karnataka: Udupi, Gokarna, Murudeshwar. ![cover-kantara]

Kumbalangi Nights (2019). Four brothers in the fishing village of Kumbalangi on the edge of Kochi, a half-built house by the water and men who have no idea how to talk about feelings. Malayalam cinema at its best: tender, funny, with plankton glowing at night in the backwaters and one of the creepiest self-styled perfect men in Indian film. A story about learning to be soft. Kochi is a place you will want to see from the water after this, not from the promenade. ![cover-kumbalangi-nights]

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995). Raj and Simran, London, a train across Europe and Punjabi mustard fields: a love story that asks a stern father's blessing instead of eloping. One of the longest theatrical runs in cinema history: it played at Mumbai's Maratha Mandir for more than a quarter of a century, and the hall still sings along with the screen. The key to what Bollywood means at home rather than at festivals. This is where Shah Rukh Khan becomes Shah Rukh Khan. ![cover-ddlj]

Sholay (1975). Two likeable crooks are hired to protect a village from the bandit Gabbar Singh: a curry western whose lines India still quotes from memory. Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra, songs, horseback chases and a villain who became a household name. Shot among the granite boulders of Ramanagara, an hour from Bangalore, which you can see from the Mysore highway. For decoding the jokes people make around you, it beats any phrasebook. ![cover-sholay]

Pather Panchali (1955). A Bengali village, a brother and sister named Apu and Durga, their first train glimpsed across a field of white kans grass, and a monsoon that changes everything. Satyajit Ray's first film and the first Indian film the world saw, with a prize at Cannes and music by Ravi Shankar. Not a single cliche: poverty without pity, childhood without sentiment, only light, water and faces. For anyone who wants cinema rather than a musical, and for anyone heading to Bengal. ![cover-pather-panchali]

Lion (2016). Five-year-old Saroo falls asleep in an empty train and wakes up in Calcutta, well over a thousand kilometres from home, unable even to say the name of his village properly. The first half, with Howrah station and its crowds, is shot so that the crowd becomes a character; the second half moves to Australia, where the grown-up Saroo searches for home on satellite maps. A true story, with Dev Patel in the lead. You look around differently on any big Indian railway station afterwards.

Taare Zameen Par (2007). Eight-year-old Ishaan cannot read a line and gets packed off to boarding school, where only the art teacher sees an artist in him rather than a slacker. Aamir Khan's directing debut, in the same key as 3 Idiots and PK: funny, moving and blunt about rote schooling. The film noticeably changed how India talks about dyslexia. Mumbai here is domestic and familial, with monsoon puddles and small flats. ![cover-taare-zameen-par]

Swades (2004). A NASA engineer comes to an Indian village to fetch his old nanny and stays: for a week at first, then long enough to build a small power plant. Shah Rukh Khan without the usual dance numbers, and a village without postcard dust or villains: the panchayat, caste, the school, water. A film about why people go back, and a quiet answer to what a pair of hands can do. One of Khan's most loved serious roles; the series Panchayat later took the same tenderness to television. ![cover-swades]

Piku (2015). A daughter drives her cranky hypochondriac father from Delhi to Kolkata, with the owner of a taxi company at the wheel because none of his drivers would take the job. A road movie about a Bengali family, grown-up children and ageing parents, and about Amitabh Bachchan's bowels, which have a full supporting role. Deepika Padukone and Irrfan Khan, conversations about food and death in the same breath. The Indian highway and the old Kolkata house are shown in a way that makes you want to drive rather than fly. ![cover-piku]

Tumbbad (2018). A folk horror about greed: a ruined mansion deep in the Maratha countryside, endless rain and Hastar, a forgotten god whose gold can be stolen if you know the rules. One of the most beautiful Indian films of its kind, with a painting in every frame. Three generations, each convinced it will stop in time. Maharashtra here is wet, dark and nowhere near a tourist trail. ![cover-tumbbad]

Water (2005). A house of widows on the banks of the Ganges in 1938: eight-year-old Chuyia, brought here after her husband's death, and the women whom tradition has assigned silence and white saris. Protests stopped the shoot in Varanasi and the film was finished in Sri Lanka, which says a lot about how alive the subject still is. An Oscar nomination and music by A. R. Rahman. Watch it before Varanasi so that the widows on the ghats have a story. ![cover-water-2005]

Sita Sings the Blues (2008). The Ramayana as an animated jazz musical: Sita sings in the voice of 1920s recordings by Annette Hanshaw, while three narrators, drawn as Indian shadow puppets, argue about what really happened. Ninety minutes, and the plot of the Ramayana settles in your head faster than from any retelling. A free, contentious, very personal version that earned its maker both praise and anger; take it as jazz, not as scripture. Released under a Creative Commons licence, so it is legally free to watch. ![cover-sita-sings-the-blues]

Life of Pi (2012). The first twenty minutes: Pondicherry, a family zoo, French boulevards and a boy who visits temple, church and mosque in turn. Then the ocean, a lifeboat and a tiger named Richard Parker, filmed well enough to win Ang Lee the Oscar for directing. A companion to Martel's novel: the book goes deeper on faith, the film goes further on water. Watch it before Pondicherry and Auroville and you will recognise the town from the first frame.

The Namesake (2006). Lahiri's novel filmed by Mira Nair, who also made Monsoon Wedding. Irrfan Khan and Tabu play the parents who carried Calcutta with them to New York, and Kal Penn the son saddled with the name Gogol. Quieter and softer than the book, but the Calcutta in it is the real one: the Howrah Bridge, yellow taxis, the old family house. Good to watch after the novel, or instead of it if time is short. ![cover-the-namesake-film]

Salaam Bombay! (1988). Bombay's street children, played by street children: Krishna, abandoned by a travelling circus, runs tea in the red-light district and saves for a ticket home. Mira Nair's debut, with the Camera d'Or at Cannes and an Oscar nomination. More honest than Slumdog Millionaire and twenty years earlier: no fairy tale, no quiz show, just real faces and the grime of Falkland Road. A hard film, after which the boys with kettles on any station platform stop being background. ![cover-salaam-bombay]

Mahabharat (Star Plus, 2013–2014). The Mahabharata on television: close to three hundred episodes, from the birth of Bhishma to the battle of Kurukshetra, with palaces, costumes and computer-made wonders. No need to watch it all; even a few dozen episodes give you what no retelling can: the faces and voices of the heroes and the sense that for India these people are alive. Afterwards Kurukshetra, Mathura and Vrindavan in the guide read as settings rather than dots on a map.

Ramayan (1987–1988). Ramanand Sagar's series, the one generations grew up on: in the late eighties the country stopped on Sunday mornings to watch, and the actors playing Rama and Sita were greeted as deities. The effects are naive and the pace slow, but that naivety is exactly the people's Ramayana as it is known at home. Its lockdown rerun in the spring of 2020 drew a record audience. Worth a few episodes before Ayodhya and Chitrakoot. ![cover-ramayan-1987]

Sacred Games (Netflix, 2018–2019). India's first Netflix original and possibly still its best: Inspector Sartaj Singh gets a call from the gangster Ganesh Gaitonde, and Mumbai has twenty-five days left. Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, police, underworld, politics, religion and a city filmed from the slums to the towers. Two seasons, hard-edged and uncensored. A companion to Vikram Chandra's novel, but it stands on its own.

Delhi Crime (Netflix, 2019–). The investigation of the 2012 case that shook the country, seen through the eyes of the Delhi police: Deputy Commissioner Vartika Chaturvedi and her team, days without sleep. Shefali Shah in the lead and an International Emmy for best drama series. Hard to watch, but honest and never lurid: the series is about the people untangling the crime rather than the crime itself. The guide warns about safety in Delhi; here you see where those warnings come from. The second season moves on to a different case.

Panchayat (Prime Video, 2020–). An engineering graduate who could not find anything better takes a job as secretary of the panchayat, the village council, in Phulera, a village in Uttar Pradesh. Nothing much happens: arguments over a water tank, slogans on walls, weddings, elections, evenings on the roof with tea. Possibly the kindest series ever made about the Indian village, with no villains and no sentiment. The guide says little about village life; Panchayat fills that gap.

Made in Heaven (Prime Video, 2019–). Two wedding planners in Delhi, and one wedding per episode: behind the marquees and fireworks lie caste, money, dowry, sexuality, family honour and the kind of love that never got a seat at the table. Created by Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, lavishly shot but never glossy. Possibly the best textbook on the Indian wedding, which sooner or later you will be invited to. The Delhi of rich colonies and farmhouses, seen from the inside.

A Suitable Boy (BBC, 2020). Six episodes instead of fifteen hundred pages: Vikram Seth's novel adapted by Mira Nair for the BBC. India in the early fifties, four families, the search for a husband for Lata and the new country's first elections. Filmed in Lucknow and Maheshwar, with real palaces and real rivers, which is an argument in itself. For those who will never get round to the novel, or who want to put faces to the characters after it.

Scam 1992 (SonyLIV, 2020). Harshad Mehta, the Big Bull of Dalal Street, and an India of the early nineties that was just discovering money. Hansal Mehta's series, based on the book by the journalists who broke the story, with Pratik Gandhi in the lead: greed, charm, old Bombay and the first towers. Among the highest-rated series in the world by IMDb users. Afterwards it is easier to see how the country lived through that decade and where today's financial Mumbai came from.

Rocket Boys (SonyLIV, 2022). Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai, two scientists building a young country's nuclear and space programmes, starting in a Bangalore laboratory and an institute in Bombay that does not yet exist. A series about friendship, ambition and science, with the Nehru era felt in every room. Jim Sarbh and Ishwak Singh in the leads. The Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and TIFR in Mumbai are both in the guide; after this, they are history rather than buildings. ![cover-rocket-boys]

The Family Man (Prime Video, 2019–). Srikant Tiwari, an intelligence agent who chases terrorists by day and answers for being late to dinner at home. Manoj Bajpayee in the lead, middle-class Mumbai humour and action shot with real intent. The second season moves to Chennai and Tamil politics. A popular, easy way into contemporary Indian series: bingeable, and a good look at how ordinary Mumbai flats actually live.

The Story of India (BBC, 2007). Six hours of Indian history filmed on location: from the cities of Harappa and the Vedas through Ashoka, the Guptas and the Mughals to independence. Michael Wood walks, asks questions and eats with people, and the textbook turns into a journey. Possibly the best video course for anyone who wants the skeleton of the story without the academic weight. Afterwards, in any fort or on any dig, you can tell which century you are standing in.

Ganges (BBC, 2007). The river from the Gangotri glacier to the Sundarbans delta in three episodes: mountains, plain and mangroves, and with them people, elephants, Ganges dolphins and gharials. Made by the BBC's natural history unit, so the frame belongs to water and living things rather than politics. Four of the guide's towns stand on this route: Gangotri, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Varanasi. Watch it before any journey along the Ganges so that the river acquires its length.

The Elephant Whisperers (Netflix, 2022). A couple of caretakers, Bomman and Bellie, and an orphaned calf named Raghu at the Theppakadu camp in the Mudumalai forest, not far from Ooty. Forty minutes of tenderness: baths, feedings, conversations with an elephant and the silence of the Nilgiri forest. The Oscar for best documentary short, the first for an Indian production in that category. Mudumalai near Ooty in the guide becomes a place you want to see with your own eyes. ![cover-the-elephant-whisperers]

All That Breathes (2022). Two brothers in a basement on the edge of Delhi nurse black kites that keep falling out of a poisoned sky, while outside there are protests, smog and a city that can barely breathe itself. A documentary shot like a poem: rats, pigs, turtles and birds share the frame with the people. The Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, the Golden Eye at Cannes and an Oscar nomination. Watch it before Delhi; afterwards the sky over the old city reads as a character of its own. ![cover-all-that-breathes]

Wild Wild Country (Netflix, 2018). Osho in America: in the early eighties his commune builds an entire city in Oregon, and then come the feud with the neighbours, the guns, the poisoning of salad bars in a nearby town and the courts. Six episodes that give every side a voice, including Ma Anand Sheela, and you never quite know whom to believe. The Pune ashram is in the guide, and this series explains who Osho was and why he still divides people. Little about the teaching, a great deal about people and power. ![cover-wild-wild-country]

Writing with Fire (2021). Khabar Lahariya, described in the film as India's only newspaper run by Dalit women, moves from print to smartphones and YouTube. Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh: reporters with phones walk up to police officers, miners and politicians who do not want them there. An Oscar nomination for best documentary feature. A film about courage, about caste, and about what journalism looks like without an air-conditioned newsroom. ![cover-writing-with-fire]

Period. End of Sentence. (Netflix, 2018). Women in a village near Hapur, Uttar Pradesh, receive a machine for making sanitary pads and start a small business, breaking the silence around periods along the way. Half an hour, and the Oscar for best documentary short. No preaching and no pity: the young women laugh, blush, count money and slowly stop looking away. Worth watching before a trip, if only to understand what is not said aloud here. ![cover-period-end-of-sentence]

The Beatles and India (2021). Rishikesh, 1968: why the Beatles came to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, what they wrote there and why they left early. A documentary built from archive footage, rare shots of the ashram and the voices of those who were around. Between the lines, the story of how India became the West's spiritual address. The so-called Beatles ashram is on the Rishikesh page; after this film its murals and abandoned meditation huts come with context. ![cover-the-beatles-and-india]

Faith Connections (2013). The 2013 Kumbh Mela at Allahabad (Prayagraj today) through the eyes of several pilgrims: a sadhu raising a foundling baby, parents who lost a son in the crowd, a boy who ran away from home and a Naga baba with his followers. Pan Nalin films without commentary, just faces, smoke, dust and water at the confluence. Possibly the best preparation for any big mela: you understand why people go and how not to get lost there. And why the crowd there feels different from a crowd anywhere else.