City Hangout – Delhi Forests, Around Town
Delhi’s wild side. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Secretive and silent. Intertwined trees, twisted trunks, thorny twigs, rocky slopes, and clumps of grass. The nearest McDonald’s is two miles away. The Delhi Walla is on Delhi’s Central Ridge,…
City Hangout – Half Price Bookstore, Select Citywalk Mall
Affordable trash. [Text and picture by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some of Delhi’s best independently owned book stores (Fact & Fiction, the Bookshop, New Book Depot) don’t encourage discounts. Concessions kill the small players. The 31-year-old Bookworm, a landmark store in…
City Hangout – Shankar’s International Dolls Museum, Near ITO Crossing
People of the world. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] For anyone curious about the world, its civilization and its people, this is a trip more affecting than your grandfather’s stacks of National Geographic magazines. Set up by cartoonist…
City Hangout – Rewari Steam Loco Shed, Haryana
80 km from Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Half a century ago, it had 85 steam engines and a staff of 500. Today it has nine engines and a staff of 25. The Rewari Steam Loco Shed,…
City Hangout – Flipside Café, Hauz Khas Village
A cultivated casualness. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] No. 7. First Floor, at Hauz Khas Village (2651 6341) – Taken in by its faux-bohemian spirit, some consider Hauz Khas Village a John Lennon song. People come here to…
City Hangout – Shahpur Jat Village, South Delhi
A designer getaway. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] In Shahpur Jat (SPJ) village, south Delhi, the turbaned elders smoke hookahs in street corners while primped mannequins gaze out through glass windows. More than a hundred stores – from…
City Hangout – The Art Galleries of Hauz Khas
The 14th century village as an art destination. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Besides its haunting ruins, Hauz Khas Village in south Delhi is known for its designer stores, curio shops, two South Indian specialty restaurants, one lounge-bar…
City Hangout – The New Landmarks, Connaught Place
Four hours in Delhi’s premier shopping district. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Connaught Place, aka CP, Delhi’s Colonial-era shopping district, is changing rapidly. Old landmarks are giving way to new. Under extensive renovation in 2010, CP is returning…
City Hangout – A Booklover’s Connaught Place
The definitive Delhi guide for book lovers. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The book is not dead. Not in Connaught Place, central Delhi’s colonial-era shopping district. One winter afternoon, The Delhi Walla visited all the bookshops in the…
City Hangout – India Habitat Center, Lodhi Road
Delhi’s swish space. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Little must have Joseph Allen Stein, the American architect of India Habitat Center (IHC), imagined that the six restaurants, four galleries, one auditorium, amphitheatre and a sprawling atrium in his…
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