Indira Gandhi International Airport: A Traveler's Guide
Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport (DEL) is India's busiest gateway, split across three terminals. Terminal 3 handles almost all international flights and most full-service domestic carriers (Air India, Vistara-legacy routes); Terminal 1 is the low-cost domestic hub for IndiGo, SpiceJet and similar; Terminal 2 sees only occasional overflow use. Terminals are far apart by road, so if your itinerary spans two of them, budget real transfer time — there's a free shuttle bus between T1 and T3, but it can take 30-45 minutes with traffic.
Arrival basics. Foreign passport holders go through manual immigration counters (fingerprint and photo capture is standard); Indian citizens and OCI cardholders can generally use faster e-gates. Customs is a simple green/red channel system — green if you have nothing to declare. Baggage claim and customs can back up badly on the big early-morning international arrival bank (roughly 4-8am), so build in patience if you land then.
Getting into the city. The Airport Express Metro (Orange Line) is the fastest and cheapest way into central Delhi: about 20 minutes to New Delhi Railway Station for a fare capped around ₹60, running from just before 5am to 11:30pm. From there you can change onto the wider Delhi Metro network. Prepaid taxi counters are in the arrivals hall and charge fixed rates by zone (expect roughly 45-60 minutes to central Delhi depending on traffic, more at peak times); Uber and Ola also operate from a designated pickup zone outside arrivals, usually cheaper than a prepaid taxi but with more of a wait during rush hour. Avoid unlicensed touts who approach you inside the terminal.
Practical tips. Money changers and ATMs are plentiful landside and airside; rates at the arrivals-hall counters are usually worse than city ATMs, so change only a small amount for the taxi/metro and do the rest later. SIM card counters (Airtel, Jio, Vi) are just past arrivals and need your passport plus a passport photo — activation can take a few hours, so don't count on connectivity the moment you land. Winter (December-January) brings dense fog that regularly delays or diverts early-morning flights, so build slack into tight connections during that season. If you're connecting between two international flights, two hours is a safer minimum than the bare published minimum connection time, since security rescreening and the T1-T3 shuttle can eat time fast.