Agrasen ki Baoli

Agrasen ki Baoli is one of Delhi's most surprising monuments — a vast medieval stepwell dropping steeply below street level, hidden down a quiet lane on Hailey Road, barely a few minutes' walk from the roar of Connaught Place.

• Sixty metres long and fifteen wide, its 108 stone steps descend in tightening tiers between high arched walls toward a deep well shaft, creating the hypnotic, receding geometry that has made the baoli a favourite of photographers, filmmakers and Instagram alike.
• Stepwells like this were once vital civic architecture in the water-scarce plains of northern India — subterranean reservoirs that stored monsoon water and stayed cool through the fierce summer.
• Agrasen ki Baoli's exact origins are uncertain: tradition attributes its founding to the legendary king Maharaja Agrasen, while the structure you see today was most likely rebuilt in the 14th century, during the Tughlaq or Lodi period, by the Agrawal community that traces its lineage to him.
• Rows of arched niches and small chambers line the flanking walls, and a modest historic mosque stands beside the well; in the shadowy lower levels, where the water once pooled, bats now roost — adding to the baoli's famously eerie, cinematic atmosphere.
• For vegetarian travellers the location could hardly be better.
• Connaught Place and Bengali Market — two of central Delhi's richest clusters of pure-vegetarian restaurants, chaat corners and sweet shops — are a short walk or ride away, so the baoli slots neatly into a day of central-Delhi sightseeing and vegetarian eating.