Evenings are when the shrines come alive

The crowd builds after asr, the lamps go on, the incense thickens, and the qawwali starts. At Nizamuddin the great night is Thursday, after maghrib. At Ajmer the shrine runs almost around the clock, with the qawwals in the courtyard through the evening, and the ritual opening and closing of the shrine at dawn and late at night is worth staying up for.

Prayer times shape the day

Five times daily the shrine or mosque turns over to salah, and non-Muslim visitors are usually asked to step to the side or wait outside briefly. This is a matter of minutes and it is not a rebuff. Friday midday is the big congregational prayer; mosques are busiest and access is most restricted then, so plan mosque visits for other days.

Ramadan changes everything

— daytime quiet, and then the streets outside Jama Masjid and Nizamuddin and Mecca Masjid become the best food in India after sunset. If you travel in Ramadan, go for iftar, and go hungry.

Haji Ali has a tide table, not an opening time

The causeway floods at high tide and you simply cannot cross. Check before you go, and go on a falling tide so you are not stranded.

Delhi

is the natural start: Nizamuddin Dargah and Jama Masjid are both in the old city and the shrine belt around them, and can be done in a day and an evening — though I would give Nizamuddin its own Thursday evening and nothing else. Nizamuddin has its own railway station; the dargah lies in the basti behind it, and the last few hundred metres are on foot through lanes no vehicle enters.

Ajmer

is about seven to eight hours by road from Delhi, or a straightforward train, and only about two and a half hours from Jaipur — which makes it easy to add to a Rajasthan trip. Pushkar, with its Brahma temple and lake, is fifteen minutes over the hill from Ajmer, and the two together make a striking pair: a Sufi dargah and a Hindu tirtha within sight of each other. The dargah itself is reached through the Dargah Bazaar on foot.

Mumbai

for Haji Ali, which sits off Worli on its causeway. The shrine is a short walk from the road at low tide and unreachable at high tide; the tide is the only timetable that matters. Mahim Dargah, also in the city, is another important shrine if you have the time.

Hyderabad

for the Mecca Masjid, right beside Charminar in the old city, so it combines naturally with the bazaars and the Chowmahalla Palace.

Srinagar

for Hazratbal, on the northern shore of Dal Lake, about twenty minutes from the city centre. Kashmir is seasonal and conditions change; check the current advisory before planning.

A sensible shape

Delhi and Ajmer together, as a north India leg of four or five days. Mumbai and Hyderabad as separate city stops. Srinagar as part of a Kashmir trip rather than squeezed in.

One practical note on all of them

the approach to a working dargah is almost always through a dense bazaar lane on foot, with shoe stands, flower sellers and a good deal of press. Leave the vehicle at the edge and walk in. That walk is part of it.

Travel October to March

Ajmer, Delhi and Hyderabad are brutally hot from April onwards, and these are shrines with stone courtyards and dense crowds and very little shade. Kashmir is the exception — Hazratbal is at its best from late spring through autumn.

Build the trip around a Thursday

Thursday evening is qawwali night at Nizamuddin and at dargahs across India, because Thursday night begins the holy day. If you do one thing on this circuit, do that. Get there before maghrib, sit at the front edge of the courtyard, and stay.

Know when the Urs are, and decide deliberately

The Urs at Ajmer, marking Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti''s death anniversary, falls in the Islamic month of Rajab and shifts each year against the Gregorian calendar; Nizamuddin''s Urs is in Rabi al-Awwal. During an Urs the shrine is at its most powerful and most impossible — hundreds of thousands of people, all-night qawwali, the whole city given over to it. Wonderful if you want that; unmanageable if you wanted a quiet visit. Check the dates for your year and choose on purpose.

Ramadan is the other calendar to know

The shrines are subdued by day and the food streets outside them after sunset are extraordinary. Be conscious that people around you are fasting; do not eat, drink or smoke in front of them in daylight.

Learn three words

Salaam alaikum on arriving, shukriya for thanks, and Khwaja Gharib Nawaz if you want to know what the crowd around you at Ajmer is saying. A little goes a long way.

Read a page of Amir Khusrau or Rumi or Bulleh Shah before you go

The qawwali you will hear is these poems, sung. Knowing even one — Chhaap Tilak, say, or Aaj Rang Hai — turns two hours of unfamiliar sound into something you can follow.

Decide your offering in advance,

and carry small notes. There is a great deal of asking at these shrines, some of it customary and some of it not, and having decided beforehand what you will give makes the whole visit calmer.

Plan the mosques for mornings and the dargahs for evenings

They are completely different experiences and putting them in the wrong slot wastes both.

Check the tide for Haji Ali,

and check the current advisory before planning Srinagar.

And come without the expectation of being an observer

Dargahs do not really have a spectator section. You will be handed rose petals, moved along in a line, given food, sat next to. Let it happen.

A scarf or stole, and a spare

Essential for covering your head at every shrine and mosque, useful for dust, useful for sitting on. This is the single most important item in your bag.

Modest, fully covering clothes in breathable cotton

Long trousers or long skirt, sleeves to the elbow at minimum, nothing tight or sheer. Men: long trousers, not shorts. It is warm, so linen and cotton over anything synthetic.

Slip-on shoes

You will be removing them constantly, often onto hot stone, and often at a crowded stand. Nothing you would be upset to lose. Socks in your bag for hot marble in the afternoon.

A small cross-body bag you can keep in front of you

The approach lanes to Nizamuddin, Ajmer and the Charminar area are dense and pickpockets work them. Leave anything valuable at the hotel.

Small notes

For offerings, for the shoe stand, for the qawwals if you choose to. Having change means you never have to make a decision under pressure.

Sun protection and a hat for the mosque courtyards

— Jama Masjid''s courtyard at midday is enormous, open and unforgiving, and the stone gets hot enough to hurt bare feet.

A water bottle,

and rehydration salts. The old-city lanes are hot and crowded and people underestimate how much they sweat.

Basic medical kit

and your own prescriptions.

For Srinagar in any season but high summer, add real warmth

— Kashmir is cold, and Hazratbal sits on the water where the wind comes off the lake.

Leave behind

shorts, sleeveless tops, anything you cannot walk in, and any expectation of walking a shrine lane while wheeling a suitcase. And leave space — Ajmer''s bazaar, the lanes at Nizamuddin and Hyderabad''s Laad Bazaar near the Mecca Masjid are all excellent, and attar, the traditional alcohol-free perfume oil, is the thing to bring home.

Cover your head — everyone

Men and women both. Scarves and caps are sold and often lent at the entrance. At mosques, women should cover the head and dress fully; some mosques restrict women''s access to certain areas, and a few restrict it entirely.

Shoes off, at the stand outside

Expect stone or marble underfoot, hot in summer. Socks help.

Dress modestly and conservatively

— full-length trousers or skirt, sleeves, nothing tight. This matters more here than at most Hindu temples.

How the offering works,

if you want to make one: buy a chadar — an embroidered cloth — and a basket of rose petals from the stalls in the lane. Carry them in, hand them to the khadim at the shrine, and they will be laid on the tomb and the petals scattered. You may be given a thread to tie to the lattice screen with a wish, and a thread to untie when it is granted. None of this requires you to be Muslim. It requires you to be sincere.

Move clockwise around the tomb

, and do not turn your back on it as you leave — step back a few paces first. Do not touch the tomb itself unless you see everyone doing so.

Women and the inner chamber

Practice differs by shrine. At Nizamuddin, women traditionally do not enter the innermost chamber and pray from the marble screen outside; at Ajmer, women do enter. Look at what is happening, or ask, and do not be offended — the custom is the shrine''s, not a judgement of you.

Prayer times

Five times a day the space turns to salah. Step aside, stay quiet, wait. Do not walk in front of someone praying, and do not photograph prayer.

At qawwali, sit on the floor and stay for a while

Money is offered to the qawwals by devotees — passed forward, or held up and taken — and you are welcome to but not expected to. Do not clap along unless others are, do not talk during a song, and do not stand in front of seated people with a camera. If someone begins to sway or weep, leave them be; that is what the music is for.

Photography

generally fine in courtyards, usually not inside the shrine chamber, never of a person praying or in a state of devotion. Ask before photographing the qawwals close-up.

Expect to be asked for money,

by khadims at the shrine, by attendants at the shoe stand, by people in the lane. Some of it is legitimate custom and some is opportunism. Decide in advance what you want to give, give it once with good grace, and decline the rest politely. Firm and friendly is the register; hostility is out of place here.

At mosques

, ritual ablution facilities are for those praying. Non-Muslims are welcome to visit most of the great mosques outside prayer times, but not to enter the prayer hall during congregational prayer, and Friday midday is best avoided entirely.

And take the langar-equivalent seriously

Many dargahs distribute food — tabarruk or niyaz. If it is offered to you, take it with your right hand and eat it.

Do not go at midday and conclude the dargah is a tourist site

In the middle of the afternoon Nizamuddin is a marble courtyard with some people in it. At eight on a Thursday evening it is one of the most intense religious experiences available in India. The time you go is not a detail; it is the whole thing.

Walk in, do not peer in

First-timers hover at the edge with a camera. Take your shoes off, cover your head, buy the rose petals, go to the tomb, come back and sit down on the floor with everyone else. Nobody will question you and the difference in what you experience is total.

You will be asked for money, more than once

A khadim will take your offering to the shrine and then indicate a donation. Someone will hand you a thread. Someone will mind your shoes. Decide beforehand what you will give, give it pleasantly, and say no to the rest with a smile and no explanation. Getting annoyed here spoils your own evening and nobody else''s.

Do not stand up during qawwali to film

You will be blocking two hundred seated people who came to listen. Sit, film a little from where you sit if you must, and then put the phone down. The recording will not capture it anyway; nothing does.

Understand that women''s access varies by shrine,

and that this is a shrine-by-shrine custom rather than a rule about you. At Nizamuddin women pray at the screen outside the inner chamber; at Ajmer women go in. Watch, or ask a woman nearby, and follow the local practice.

Give Ajmer more than a stop on the way to Pushkar

Every tour bus does Pushkar and gives the dargah forty minutes. Ajmer Sharif is the more remarkable of the two, and the walk in through Dargah Bazaar, past the enormous cooking cauldrons in the courtyard, is worth doing slowly.

Eat

The food around these shrines is among the best in India and it is not incidental to the pilgrimage — Nizamuddin''s lanes, the streets below Jama Masjid, the biryani and haleem of Hyderabad''s old city. Come hungry.

Do not treat this as a Muslim circuit you are visiting from outside

The whole history of Indian Sufism is of a devotional space that Hindus, Sikhs and Christians have used freely for eight hundred years. Ask the person tying a thread beside you what they came for; often they are not Muslim either.

Be aware that Kashmir requires checking

Hazratbal is beautiful and central to Kashmiri life, and conditions in the valley vary. Check the current position before you commit to it.

And go once with no plan

Turn up at a dargah on a Thursday, sit at the back, and stay until the qawwals stop. That is the circuit.