This page measured the distances on Aug. 25, 2026, from each terminal's own forecourt. Method, coordinates and sources sit at the foot of this page.
Greater Kailash I is 21.8 km from Terminal 3 and 16.1 km from Terminal 1. On a clear road that is about 29 minutes from T3 and 20 from T1. At 6 p.m., closer to 69 and 51.
Three numbers, one destination. That is the whole problem with this question. The distance to IGI depends on which terminal you are using and which route the driver takes. It also tells you almost nothing about how long you will actually be in the car.
| From | To Greater Kailash I | Clear road | Evening peak |
|---|---|---|---|
| Terminal 3 (fastest route) | 21.8 km | ~29 min | ~69 min |
| Terminal 3 (shortest route) | 20.6 km | ~30 min | ~65 min |
| Terminal 1 | 16.1 km | ~20 min | ~51 min |
| Terminal 1, by metro | 11.9 km of track | ~16 min, no change | ~16 min |
That last row is not a mistake, and it is the most useful line on this page. We will come back to it.
Everything below is measured or sourced. Where a figure is derived rather than measured, it says so.
Why the distance is the least useful number here
Delhi’s traffic is measured every year, and the 2025 figures make the problem concrete.
| Measure | Morning rush | Evening rush |
|---|---|---|
| Time to cover 10 km | 25 min 58 s | 31 min 45 s |
| Average speed | 23.1 km/h | 18.9 km/h |
| Congestion above free-flow | 71.7% | 107.4% |
A Delhi driver lost 104 hours to congestion in 2025. That is four days and eight hours, and five hours worse than 2024. Congestion peaked on Wednesday, Oct. 15, when it hit 106% city-wide and 192% in the 6 o’clock hour.
Apply that to your airport run. At the evening average of 18.9 km/h, 22 km takes 69 minutes. The same 22 km at 2 a.m. takes less than 30. Same road, same distance, two and a half times the journey.
One caveat runs in your favour, and it belongs here rather than buried in a footnote: those speeds are city-wide averages across every road type, including the choked interior lanes of the old city. The airport run is almost entirely arterials and flyovers, so it usually beats the average. Treat every evening-peak figure in this article as a conservative upper bound: the number to plan against, not the one you will always experience.
Two things push the other way. The corridor out of the airport is genuinely stressed: a study the airport operator commissioned grades NH-48 at Level of Service F, the bottom of the scale, with no parallel highway to absorb overflow. And the December and January fog season slows the road at exactly the time of year flights are most likely to be delayed anyway.
Every South Delhi distance, from both terminals
This page measured these road distances on Aug. 25, 2026, from each terminal’s forecourt. Terminal 2 sits beside Terminal 3, so the T3 column applies to it.
| Destination | From T3 | From T1 | Clear road (T3) | Evening peak, derived |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vasant Kunj | 10.8 km | 9.9 km | 16 min | ~34 min |
| Vasant Vihar | 12.6 km | 7.0 km | 17 min | ~40 min |
| Chhatarpur | 12.7 km | 11.9 km | 17 min | ~40 min |
| Mehrauli / Qutub Minar | 13.0 km | 13.0 km | 20 min | ~41 min |
| Hauz Khas | 16.4 km | 10.7 km | 22 min | ~52 min |
| South Extension | 17.1 km | 11.4 km | 24 min | ~54 min |
| Green Park | 17.4 km | 11.6 km | 22 min | ~55 min |
| Malviya Nagar | 17.6 km | 11.9 km | 24 min | ~56 min |
| Defence Colony | 18.1 km | 12.4 km | 27 min | ~58 min |
| Saket | 18.7 km | 14.4 km | 25 min | ~59 min |
| Lajpat Nagar | 19.9 km | 14.2 km | 30 min | ~63 min |
| Chittaranjan Park | 20.7 km | 15.0 km | 28 min | ~66 min |
| Nehru Place | 21.1 km | 15.3 km | 28 min | ~67 min |
| Greater Kailash II | 21.1 km | 15.4 km | 28 min | ~67 min |
| Kalkaji | 21.4 km | 15.7 km | 28 min | ~68 min |
| Greater Kailash I | 21.8 km | 16.1 km | 29 min | ~69 min |
| Jasola Vihar | 26.9 km | 21.0 km | 34 min | ~85 min |
| Sarita Vihar | 27.6 km | 21.8 km | 34 min | ~88 min |
The evening-peak column is derived, not measured: distance ÷ 18.9 km/h, Delhi’s published evening rush-hour average speed. Because that average covers all road types and this route is arterial, treat it as an upper bound.
Two findings sit in this table.
Terminal 1 is closer to South Delhi than Terminal 3 in every single row. It saves 5 to 6 km across the Greater Kailash, Kalkaji and Nehru Place belt, and nearly 6 km on Vasant Vihar. The two terminals sit 6.6 km apart on opposite sides of the airfield, and T1 is the one facing the city. Only Mehrauli comes out level.
South Delhi is not one distance from the airport. From T3 it runs 10.8 km at Vasant Kunj to 27.6 km at Sarita Vihar, a spread of nearly three times. If you are weighing localities and airport reach genuinely matters, that spread is worth more than any single figure here.
The full list of South Delhi colonies covers ground this table does not, and Vasant Kunj’s pockets and price bands are the obvious starting point if the top row caught your eye.
One honest caveat. This page measured each figure to a single fixed point inside the locality: a market, a metro station, a main crossing. South Delhi colonies are large. An address at the far end of Greater Kailash II can sit 1.5 km from the point measured here, and Vasant Kunj spans several sectors. Treat these as accurate to within about 1 km for your own door, and check which pincode your address falls under if you are unsure which pocket you are in.
Your terminal changes the answer completely
By road, Terminal 1 saves you 5 or 6 km. By metro it changes the journey entirely, because the terminals sit on different lines that go to different places.
Greater Kailash, from each terminal
| From Terminal 1 | From Terminal 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Line | Magenta Line | Airport Express, then Yellow, then Magenta |
| Interchanges | None | Two: New Delhi, then Hauz Khas |
| Stations | 10 | 20 |
| Track distance | 11.9 km | 32.1 km |
| Journey time | ~16 minutes | ~43 minutes |
| Fare | ₹32 (₹29 by smart card) | ₹64 (₹58 by smart card) |
Greater Kailash sits directly on the Magenta Line, and so does Terminal 1. The ride between them covers 10 stations with no train change: Terminal 1-IGI Airport, Shankar Vihar, Vasant Vihar, Munirka, R.K. Puram, IIT, Hauz Khas, Panchsheel Park, Chirag Delhi, Greater Kailash. That is 16 minutes and ₹32, faster than a cab at any hour of the working day.
From Terminal 3 the same destination is a different proposition. The Airport Express runs the wrong way, inbound to New Delhi station, north-east and away from South Delhi. You ride it in, change to the Yellow Line, come back south, change again at Hauz Khas, then take three more stops on the Magenta Line. That is 32 km of track to cover 22 by road, and 43 minutes before you count walking between platforms.
Saket follows the same pattern. From Terminal 1 it is 11.3 km and about 15 minutes with one interchange at Hauz Khas, where changing platforms is itself a 10-minute walk. From Terminal 3 it is 31.5 km, 18 stations and about 42 minutes.
Terminal 2 has no metro station of its own. It sits beside Terminal 3, so the road distances above apply unchanged, but a T2 passenger wanting the metro must first cross to T3 and join the Airport Express there. That makes the metro an even weaker option from T2 than from T3.
The rule this produces
From Terminal 1, if your destination is on or near the Magenta Line, take the metro. Vasant Vihar, Munirka, R.K. Puram, IIT, Hauz Khas, Panchsheel Park, Chirag Delhi and Greater Kailash are all a direct ride, and the Magenta Line’s full station sequence continues east past Nehru Enclave to Kalkaji Mandir.
From Terminal 3 or Terminal 2, the metro is usually the wrong choice for South Delhi. It is cheap and immune to traffic, which matters at 6 p.m., but two interchanges with luggage is a real cost. The exception is severe congestion, when 43 predictable minutes beats 70 unpredictable ones.
Before planning around either, confirm which of Delhi’s three terminals your flight uses. Delhi reallocated its airlines across all three buildings in October 2025, and much of the published advice still works from the old map.
Two practical notes for the metro route. Greater Kailash metro station’s entry gates and parking matter if someone is collecting you, because the exits land you on opposite sides of a busy road.
And if your destination is not on the Magenta Line, check how many metro lines cross South Delhi before assuming an interchange is unavoidable. Several South Delhi addresses sit closer to where the Yellow Line stops on its southern arm than to anything magenta.
Hauz Khas repays a second look as more than a change of platform. It is one of the few places in Delhi where two lines, a shopping district and a residential colony overlap, and Hauz Khas as a neighbourhood rather than an interchange explains why it keeps turning up in these journeys.
What the trip costs
A government notification sets Delhi taxi fares, not the driver. The airport’s prepaid booths charge exactly these rates, which is why the prepaid queue is the safe default at any hour.
| Item | Rate |
|---|---|
| Non-AC taxi | ₹40 for the first km, then ₹17 per km |
| AC taxi | ₹40 for the first km, then ₹20 per km |
| Night surcharge | 25% of the fare, 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. |
| Luggage | ₹15 per piece. Nothing for a shopping bag or small case |
| Stuck in traffic | ₹1 per minute, when the cab covers less than 1 km in 10 minutes |
| Prepaid booth service charge | ₹15 per trip |
| Tolls | The passenger pays, both directions |
Worked out for Greater Kailash
At the measured 21.8 km from Terminal 3, in an AC taxi, in the daytime:
- First kilometre: ₹40
- Remaining 20.8 km × ₹20: ₹416
- Metered fare: ₹456
- Prepaid booth service charge: ₹15
- Total before extras: ₹471
The same trip non-AC is ₹40 + (20.8 × ₹17) = ₹394. Add the ₹15 service charge for ₹409.
From Terminal 1, at 16.1 km, the AC fare drops to ₹40 + (15.1 × ₹20) = ₹342 plus service charge, or ₹357. That saves more than ₹100 on the same destination.
Between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., add 25% to the metered fare: the T3 daytime ₹456 becomes ₹570, plus the service charge, for ₹585. Add ₹15 for each substantial bag, and any toll on the route. Twenty minutes of genuine crawling adds ₹20 under the waiting clause.
Run the same arithmetic against any row in the distance table. That is why this page publishes the rates rather than a single quoted price.
Auto-rickshaws
The city auto tariff is ₹30 for the first 1.5 km, then ₹11 per km, with the same 25% night surcharge and ₹10 per large bag. It appears here not as an airport option but because it governs the last-mile leg from a metro station. That is the piece most people forget when comparing metro against a door-to-door cab. A ₹32 metro ride plus a ₹60 auto is still less than a fifth of the prepaid fare.
App cabs
No rupee figure appears here for Uber or Ola, and that is deliberate. They publish no rate card, their pricing moves with demand, and any number quoted on a website is a guess dressed as a fact.
The shape of it is knowable, though. App fares undercut the prepaid rate comfortably at quiet hours and can exceed it substantially when demand spikes. That is to say, precisely at the arrival peaks and in the rain, the two moments you are most likely to need one. The prepaid rate does not move. Landing at 2 a.m., or into a downpour, the fixed rate is usually the better deal as well as the safer one.
Buses
Bus services do run between the airport and parts of South Delhi, and they are by a wide margin the cheapest option and the slowest. No fares or route numbers appear here because research could not trace any to a published source. An invented bus fare is worse than no bus fare. If cost is the binding constraint, the metro is the reliable cheap option, not the bus.
If you are budgeting a recurring trip rather than a one-off, what Greater Kailash costs to live in puts the airport run in proportion. For most households it is a rounding error against rent, which is exactly why it should not dominate a locality decision.
The route, and why websites disagree about the distance
Two realistic routes run from Terminal 3 to the Greater Kailash belt, and the routing data shows something counter-intuitive: the shorter one is slower even on an empty road.
The Outer Ring Road route: 21.8 km, about 29 minutes clear. Out of the terminal on IGI Airport T3 Road, onto Northern Access Road and Ulan Batar Road, up Rao Tula Ram Marg and over the Rao Tula Ram flyover, along Palam Marg onto the Outer Ring Road, east past the Khelgaon flyover, then Ho Chi Minh Marg into the Greater Kailash blocks.
The inner Ring Road route: 20.6 km, about 30 minutes clear. The same start, then Mahatma Gandhi Marg (the inner Ring Road) over the AIIMS flyover, along Josip Broz Tito Marg into Lala Lajpat Rai Marg near Moolchand, the junction where the Ring Road meets the Lajpat Nagar approach.
The inner route is 1.2 km shorter and roughly a minute slower with no traffic at all. Under load the gap widens sharply: the AIIMS and Safdarjung stretch carries hospital traffic all day and the Moolchand approach backs up in both peaks. The outer arc has more flyovers and fewer signals.
This is also why published distances for this journey disagree. A site quoting 20.6 km has measured the inner route; one quoting 21.8 km has measured the outer. Neither is wrong. They are different roads. Add the fact that “the airport” can mean any of three terminals 6.6 km apart, and a 5-kilometre disagreement between two websites is entirely explicable without either being careless.
Practically: the Outer Ring Road’s full South Delhi arc is the default, and the one a good driver takes at peak. The inner route is defensible late at night, when the signals are clear and the shorter distance actually pays.
For destinations further east the picture changes. You reach Jasola, Sarita Vihar and Okhla through the Mathura Road corridor towards Faridabad rather than either ring road, which is why they sit 5 km further out in the table.
For Saket and Malviya Nagar, Press Enclave Road, the Saket approach branches off the Outer Ring Road. And if the journey continues past South Delhi altogether, the Saket-to-Gurugram run picks up where this one ends.
The structural problem behind all of it: NH-48 is the only major highway linking Delhi and Gurugram, it has no parallel route, and the airport operator’s own study grades it Level of Service F. Proposed fixes (a Dwarka Expressway extension, a Rangpuri bypass) target 2033. Until then the corridor does what it does.
Working out when to leave
Do not memorise a number. Build one. It takes 10 seconds and works for any address and any hour.
- Take your distance from the table above, from the correct terminal column.
- Divide by the speed for your travel period. Delhi’s published averages are 23.1 km/h in the morning rush and 18.9 km/h in the evening rush. Off-peak, use the clear-road column instead.
- Add 15 minutes for the airport approach: the forecourt, the entry queue and the walk in. This allowance is this article’s own estimate, not a published figure; adjust it if you know the terminal well.
- Add your buffer. Thirty minutes if a missed flight matters.
Worked for Greater Kailash to Terminal 3, leaving at 6 p.m.: 21.8 ÷ 18.9 = 69 minutes, plus 15, plus 30, for just under two hours, door to terminal entrance.
The same calculation at 11 a.m. uses the clear-road figure and gives about 74 minutes. That difference is the entire reason to do the arithmetic rather than trusting a remembered “it’s about forty minutes.”
This gets you to the terminal door. What happens after that is a separate calculation: check-in cut-offs, security, the walk to the gate. The airport article linked above covers it.
In the other direction, landing rather than departing, allow roughly 45 minutes to an hour between wheels down and being in a moving vehicle: taxiing, immigration if you are arriving internationally, baggage and the walk to the prepaid booth. A flight landing at 9 p.m. puts you in Greater Kailash somewhere around 11 p.m.
If you land after the metro has stopped, both airport lines are out. Check the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) for the exact last train on your date. These shift, and the two lines do not stop at the same time. After that it is a prepaid taxi or an app cab, and the prepaid booth is the one definitely staffed.
If you are heading onward rather than into the city, the rail and bus terminus at Sarai Kale Khan runs through the night in a way the metro does not. For late arrivals as a routine rather than an exception, how South Delhi’s recorded crime compares is a fair thing to read alongside the timetable.
If airport reach is driving where you live
For most people it should not be. The difference between the best and worst airport reach in South Delhi is about 50 minutes at peak, and you will make that trip perhaps 30 times a year. You will make the school, office and market run every day.
For some readers it is a genuine variable: cabin crew and pilots on early sign-ons, hospitality staff working the airport hotel belt, consultants flying weekly. If that is you, the table above is the ranking, and it splits South Delhi into three bands.
Less than 13 km from T3: Vasant Kunj, Vasant Vihar, Chhatarpur, Mehrauli. Around 40 minutes even at peak. The trade is centrality. These sit on the western and southern edges, further from South Delhi’s commercial core.
From 16 to 22 km: the Hauz Khas-Green Park-Saket-Greater Kailash belt. Roughly an hour at evening peak, but this is where South Delhi’s density of markets, schools and hospitals actually is. Greater Kailash also collects the Magenta Line consolation prize: a direct ride to Terminal 1 that no locality in the first band can match on a single line. Living in Greater Kailash, block by block is the fuller picture, and rental flats listed in Greater Kailash show what the belt currently costs.
More than 26 km: Jasola, Sarita Vihar, Okhla. Eighty-five minutes at peak. People accept this because the Jasola business district puts them minutes from work. A 10-minute daily commute beats an 80-minute airport run taken a few times a year. That is the correct trade, and it is the one this section is arguing for.
Two more to look at if the Magenta Line access is the appeal. Why Kalkaji draws working professionals covers a locality further along the same line at a different price point.
And what there is to see around Greater Kailash is the softer half of the same decision. If you are still shortlisting, what is currently available to rent across South Delhi is a better starting filter than a distance column.
Frequently asked questions
Why do different websites give different distances for the same journey?
Three reasons, and none of them is carelessness. “The airport” can mean Terminal 1, Terminal 2 or Terminal 3, and T1 and T3 are 6.6 km apart. “Greater Kailash” spans two large blocks either side of the Outer Ring Road. And two viable routes differ by 1.2 km. Combine those and a 5-kilometre spread between two sites is entirely explicable. This page states its origin coordinates and its destination points so you can see exactly what this page measured.
Is the Airport Express any use for reaching Greater Kailash?
Only indirectly, and it is the slow way. It runs from Terminal 3 north-east to New Delhi station, away from South Delhi. Reaching Greater Kailash means riding it inbound, changing to the Yellow Line, then changing again at Hauz Khas: 32 km of track and about 43 minutes to cover a 22 km road journey. It is genuinely useful for central Delhi and for Dwarka. For South Delhi from Terminal 3, the road is usually quicker.
What happens if I land after the metro has stopped?
Prepaid taxi or app cab, and the prepaid booth is the more reliable of the two at that hour. The traffic police run the booth, a fixed counter with a printed receipt; anyone approaching you in the arrivals hall offering a “prepaid” cab is not it. Fares carry a 25% night surcharge between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., which the calculation above already includes.
Does the prepaid taxi fare change if the driver takes a longer route?
No. The booth fixes the prepaid fare for your destination, so the route risk sits with the driver. That is the main reason the system exists. On a metered trip it does matter, and the two-route comparison above is useful: the outer arc is a kilometre longer than the inner one and usually faster, so a driver taking the Outer Ring Road at peak is helping you, not padding the meter.
The short version
Greater Kailash I is 21.8 km from Terminal 3 and 16.1 km from Terminal 1. Both are around half an hour on a clear road.
The hour matters more than the kilometres. The same trip runs to roughly 69 minutes at evening peak, and Delhi’s published rush-hour speeds let you calculate it for whatever time you are actually travelling.
Check your terminal before choosing a mode. From Terminal 1, Greater Kailash is a direct 16-minute Magenta Line ride for ₹32. From Terminal 3 the same journey by metro takes 43 minutes and two interchanges. The road wins.
Method and sources
Distances. This page measured them on Aug. 25, 2026, using an OpenStreetMap-based routing engine (OSRM), from each terminal’s forecourt to a fixed point in each destination locality. Origins: Terminal 3 at 28.5560° N, 77.0870° E (a point that snaps to IGI Airport T3 Road) and Terminal 1 at 28.5653° N, 77.1224° E. The clear-road durations are the engine’s free-flow estimates and assume no traffic; they are a baseline, not a prediction.
Validation. The routing engine confirmed the Terminal 3 origin by naming its first road segment as IGI Airport T3 Road. A second route to Connaught Place cross-checked it: 19.5 km, terminating on the Outer Circle, consistent with the commonly published figure of about 16 km from the airport to the city centre once road routing is accounted for. Research checked the measured Terminal 3 to Greater Kailash figure against an independent travel-planning service, which gives 12.8 miles (20.6 km). That is an exact match for the inner Ring Road route measured here, and it confirmed there are two legitimate answers rather than one wrong one.
The gap between the terminals. The shortest driving route between Terminal 3 and Terminal 1 measures 6.6 km. Published sources and the airport’s own inter-terminal shuttle timing commonly describe the two as about 8 km apart, which reflects the shuttle’s actual routing along terminal service roads rather than the shortest path a cab would take. Both figures are correct for what they describe; 6.6 km is what your driver covers.
Return journeys. All figures are airport-to-locality. Return distances are close but not always identical, because Delhi’s flyovers, one-way sections and terminal ramps do not mirror perfectly. Expect a few hundred metres of difference, occasionally more.
Traffic figures. Delhi’s 2025 rush-hour travel times, average speeds, congestion levels and annual hours lost come from the published TomTom Traffic Index for New Delhi. The evening-peak column is derived, not measured: distance divided by the published evening average of 18.9 km/h. Because that average covers all road types while the airport corridor is arterial, treat it as a conservative upper bound.
Corridor grading. The Level of Service F rating for NH-48 and the 2033 project timeline come from a study commissioned by the airport operator, as reported in the press.
Fares. Taxi and auto-rickshaw rates are the Delhi Government notified tariff, cross-checked against the Delhi Traffic Police prepaid booth fare card for IGI Airport. The notification traces to January 2023 and research found no later revision. The card displayed at the booth is authoritative on the day you travel.
Metro. Routes, station counts, interchanges, journey times and fares are DMRC figures. First and last train times shift; check DMRC for your date rather than relying on any article.
Not stated here: app-cab fares, airport parking charges and bus fares or route numbers. Research could not trace any of them to a published rate, and a plausible-looking invented number is worse than none.
The Connaught Place run measured the same way covers that journey in its own right, using the same method.