A taste of Afghan delights in Lajpat

As one enters the Afghan refugee colony in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar, the smell of baked breads pervading the air is hard to miss. Every street in the colony has one local bakery to offer.

These local bakeries are mainly run by Afghan refugees, who fled war and Taliban regime in their home country -Afghanistan. These bakeries are primarily set up on a table by the side of the road as trespassers halt and purchase their favourites.

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With an assortment of breads and desserts such as Baklava, cakes, doughnut-like sweets, etc., the seller sits from morning to night with these baked items.

While some shops are makeshift, some are part of the bakeries run in homes where the popular Afghan rotis are also baked in bulk. “These are freshly baked everyday because all our baked stuff, including the desserts are all sold out by night,” says Sulaiman, one of the bakers at Kastur Bagh, a lane in Lajpat Nagar where a large number of Afghan refugees live.

The Afghan delights are not only popular among locals in the area that is inhabited by refugees from other countries sharing a similar Persian cuisine, but also by people outside of the culture who come to Lajpat Nagar from afar to take some of the lip smacking food.

Here’s a virtual tour of the local bakeries in Lajpat Nagar: