India's cleanest city seven years running and its most underrated street food capital — Sarafa Bazar's midnight jewelry-market-turned-food-street, 56 Chappan Dukan's sizzling chaos, and the Holkar dynasty's Indo-Saracenic palace
Indore (pop. 3.3 million) is the commercial capital of Madhya Pradesh and India's cleanest city for seven consecutive years under the Swachh Bharat rankings — a distinction that has made it the benchmark for urban sanitation in India. But Indore's real claim to food culture comes from its position as the subcontinent's most underrated street food capital: Sarafa Bazar (a wholesale jewelry market by day that transforms into a 100-stall street food bazaar from 10pm to 3am — the only major nighttime street food market in India operating in a jewelry district), and Chappan Dukan (56 Shops) — a de…
Indore was founded in 1715 as a market town at the crossing of two trade routes through the Malwa plateau — a purely commercial origin reflected in its present-day economic orientation. The Holkar dynasty (Maratha chiefs from the Malwa region) made Indore their capital after 1733; the most celebrated ruler was the widowed Maharani Ahilyabai Holkar (1767–1795), now considered one of the greatest rulers in Indian history — she reconstructed temples across India that had been destroyed by Mughal invasions, built rest houses and water installations along pilgrimage routes from her own income, and…