Nai Sarak

Nai Sarak is a narrow, book-crammed artery in the heart of Old Delhi that most Delhiites know as the place where the city buys its textbooks.

• Running for barely half a kilometre between the eastern end of Chandni Chowk Road and the mouth of Chawri Bazar, its name simply means 'new road' — a modest label for what grew into one of India's largest wholesale-and-retail book streets.
• Every doorway is a shop, and every shop is stacked floor to ceiling with school primers, university course books, medical and engineering tomes, children's picture books, competitive-exam guides and reams of stationery, the parcels spilling onto the pavement in twine-bound bundles.
• The street owes its straightness to the years after 1857, when colonial authorities cut a new thoroughfare through the dense lanes of Shahjahanabad and christened it Egerton Road; the older Hindustani name Nai Sarak stuck, and the British one faded.
• The double-storeyed early-twentieth-century facades that still line it — carved wooden balconies above, roll-shutter shopfronts below — give the lane its layered, lived-in character.
• Interspersed among the booksellers you will find dealers in wedding cards, pure cotton and silk saris, and the occasional musical-instrument shop, a reminder that this corner of the walled city has always mixed its trades.
• Shopping here is a contact sport.
• Buyers haggle over stacks; porters shoulder head-loads through the crush; students hunt second-hand editions at a fraction of cover price.
• Come with a title in mind and a shopkeeper will pull it from an improbable tower within minutes.
• Wholesale rates reward bulk buyers, but retail browsers are welcome too — this is as much a place to soak up Old Delhi's mercantile theatre as to actually buy a book.
• Vegetarian travellers are on very comfortable ground here.
• Nai Sarak sits inside the great meat-free-by-tradition belt of Chandni Chowk, where the street snacks are almost entirely vegetarian.
• Jung Bahadur Kachori Wala, an institution on the lane itself, fries crisp urad-dal kachoris served with tangy aloo sabzi; a short walk toward Chawri Bazar brings you to Kuremal Mohan Lal Kulfi Wale for stuffed-fruit kulfi.
• Everything is egg-free and alcohol-free — as always, simply confirm before you order. Practicalities are easy.
• The market runs roughly 10.30am to 8pm and is closed on Sundays, the quietest window being early on a weekday morning before the wholesale rush.
• Chawri Bazar metro (Yellow Line) sits at the southern end and Chandni Chowk metro at the northern; both put you a few minutes' walk away.
• Delhi's winter air (November to January) can be genuinely poor, so carry an N95 mask if you are sensitive.