Bus stations
Delhi sorts its inter-state buses by geography: Kashmere Gate for the north, Anand Vihar for the east, Sarai Kale Khan for the west and south — 1,600 buses a day at the biggest.
The Transport Department is formalising what was always half-true: buses from Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh, Himachal, J&K and Nepal will run only from Kashmere Gate (the Maharana Pratap ISBT, at the Red and Yellow metro lines); UP, Uttarakhand, Bihar and the east from Anand Vihar (Pink/Blue lines, beside the railway terminal); Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and the south and west from Sarai Kale Khan (next to Hazrat Nizamuddin station).
The goal is decongestion: today Kashmere Gate peaks at 1,750 buses a day in festival months, and duplicate routings clog the Ring Road. For passengers the change is pure gain — one state, one terminal, no guessing. All three terminals link directly to the metro; Kashmere Gate to Anand Vihar is 24 minutes and ₹32.
The classic Delhi routes: Jaipur in 5–6 hours (Rajasthan state deluxe and private Volvos), Chandigarh in 5, Dehradun and the Himalayan gateways overnight, Agra in 4 — though for Agra the train usually wins. Private Volvo and sleeper operators cluster at Kashmere Gate’s outer bays and around Majnu-ka-Tilla; book through redBus or the state RTC apps. Arrive 45 minutes early: bays are numbered, Hindi dominates the boards, and festival weeks sell out days ahead.
THE TIO READ
Learn the trinity and Delhi buses stop being a lottery: north–Kashmere Gate, east–Anand Vihar, west/south–Sarai Kale Khan. For Jaipur we take the train; for the Himalayan towns the overnight Volvo from Kashmere Gate is unbeatable value — book the front lower berth. And keep the metro card topped up: it is the only reliable way to move between terminals when a ticket says one ISBT and your hotel said another.
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