What to take to India from the UK (2026): gifts, chocolate, what is cheaper here, and how to ship a box

Every "what should I take to India" search is really two questions: what will they be pleased with, and what is pointless to carry. The second one has changed more than the first. In October 2026 the pound buys about ₹126, India makes or imports most of what Britain sells, and Indian customs taxes anything above ₹75,000 of new goods at 38.5% — so the old habit of filling a second suitcase with gadgets is now a way of paying twice for things that cost less in Mumbai.

What still lands well

• Food that tastes of here. British-made Cadbury (the UK bar is made to a different recipe from the Indian one, and people notice), tubs of Quality Street, Celebrations, Roses and Heroes, Walkers shortbread, Marks & Spencer and McVitie’s biscuits, English Breakfast and Earl Grey tea, Marmite for the one relative who loves it. Cheap here, scarce or two to three times the price there.
• A bottle. Scotch is the gift that has not changed in forty years. Two litres is the duty-free limit, and the section on food and drink explains why it is a thinner bargain than it was.
• Things that are taxed hard in India. Perfume and aftershave, branded cosmetics and skincare, vitamins and supplements from a high-street chemist, sunscreen with European filters, good leather shoes, Lego and licensed football shirts, wool and cashmere, children’s clothes from the sales. These carry 10–20% import duty plus GST in India and are often sold there at a premium on top.
• The personal thing. A framed photograph, a UK-printed book about the city you live in, a tin from a famous London shop, your child’s school project. It costs nothing in weight and it is what gets kept.

What wastes a suitcase

• Electronics. The made-in-India iPhone 17 costs ₹99,900 in India and £899 (about ₹1,13,800) in London; a Samsung or a laptop is the same story, and anything above your allowance is taxed. The section on what is cheaper has the numbers.
• Anything Indian shops already sell. Lindt, Ferrero, Toblerone and Nutella are in every Indian supermarket; so are Nivea, Dove, Heinz beans and Twinings tea. Pay the premium only for what is genuinely British or unavailable.
• Household goods, towels, bedsheets, kitchen plastics, cheap clothes. India makes them better and cheaper. The same goes for spices, rice cookers and pressure cookers, which some people still carry the wrong way.
• A television. It is dutiable from the first rupee, whatever your allowance, under the 2026 rules — buy it there.

The rest of this page goes person by person, then product by product, then through the three sets of rules that decide what arrives: Indian customs, the airline, and the courier. If you are visiting for Diwali or a wedding, read the customs section before you shop: the allowance is per person, cannot be pooled, and the queue at the red channel is where good intentions get taxed.

Price bands are October 2026 UK shelf prices converted at about ₹126 to the pound. They are a guide to proportion, not a shopping list; buy what the person actually uses.

Three rules that save money and face

1. Count the recipients before you shop. Families with four households of relatives and an office each end up with thirty gifts. Thirty bars of chocolate weigh six kilos and cost £60; thirty perfumes weigh the same and cost £1,200. Decide the tier for each name first.
2. Spend on the thing, not the box. A tin of shortbread from a department store on Piccadilly is the same biscuit at three times the supermarket price; the difference is the tin. That is fine for one in-law and foolish for twenty colleagues.
3. Match the climate and the month. Chocolate going to Chennai in May is a mistake; the same chocolate in Delhi in December is perfect. Woollens make sense for the north between November and February and nowhere in the south. The packing section has the practicalities.

What not to give

Perfume to someone whose scent you do not know; electronics (see below); anything that needs a UK plug or 240-volt-only step-down converter; and large bottles of toiletries that a Mumbai chemist stocks at a third of the price. Avoid carrying anything for a stranger, however plausible the story — you sign the customs declaration, not them.

Chocolate

British chocolate is the single most requested thing on any UK–India trip, and the request is specific: UK-made Cadbury. A 180 g bar of Dairy Milk costs about £2 (₹250) in a supermarket in October 2026; the multipacks and the sharing bags are the economical way to cover a whole office. The tubs — Quality Street, Celebrations, Roses, Heroes — list at about £7 (₹880) at full price and are on offer at £4–5 somewhere every week from September to Christmas, which is why so many of them fly east in December. Galaxy, Maltesers, Crunchie, Flake, Wispa and Fruit & Nut all travel; Lindt and Ferrero are sold in every Indian mall and are not worth the weight. Chocolate is a dairy product on paper, but sealed, commercially packed confectionery has never been what the quarantine declaration is aimed at (the customs section explains the form).

Biscuits and the rest of the cupboard

Walkers shortbread in tins, Marks & Spencer biscuit selections, McVitie’s Digestives and Hobnobs (the Indian-made ones are different), Jaffa Cakes, Jacob’s crackers, good cheddar if you are prepared to declare it, Branston pickle, HP sauce, Marmite, Yorkshire or PG Tips tea bags, loose Earl Grey and English Breakfast in tins, drinking chocolate, jams and marmalade, oatcakes. Biscuits survive if the tin is in the middle of the case; jars need a plastic bag and socks. Skip crisps (they arrive as crumbs), skip anything Indian supermarkets stock under the same brand, and skip meat products of any kind.

Whisky, and why it is a thinner bargain than it was

Two litres of alcoholic liquor or wine per adult is the duty-free limit on arrival, counted inside the ₹75,000 allowance; a third bottle is charged at the commercial rate for spirits, which Indian customs pages still quote at 150% plus surcharge, so nobody sensible carries one. Within the limit the question is whether it is still worth the weight, and in October 2026 the honest answer is sometimes:

• Blended Scotch has stopped being cheap to carry. Johnnie Walker Black Label is about £36 (₹4,560) at a big supermarket’s full price, and £22–26 when one of them has it on offer, which is often. In India the same bottle (750 ml) sells for ₹3,300–3,600 in Delhi, ₹2,500–2,800 in Gurgaon and ₹3,600–4,250 in Mumbai (Esquire India, September 2026), and since the UK–India trade agreement came into force on 15 July 2026 India’s tariff on Scotch has halved from 150% to 75%, with cuts of 10–15% reaching shelves in Maharashtra, Goa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh first. Buy it on offer or at the airport, or do not bother.
• Single malts still win, by less. Glenfiddich 12 is £42–43 (about ₹5,400) at a UK supermarket and around ₹5,200 in Delhi before the tariff cuts filter through; the margin is in the older expressions and the distilleries India does not import, not in the entry-level bottle. A 12-year-old that a Delhi shop sells is not a gift the UK makes special; a Speyside or Islay bottle they cannot buy is.
• Gin, wine and beer are not worth carrying: gin tariffs fell with whisky’s, Indian wine is better than it was and far cheaper than imported, and two litres of beer is a joke.

Whatever you choose, it goes in the hold, wrapped in clothes in the centre of the case, and it must be in your own baggage: allowances cannot be pooled, so a non-drinking spouse carrying your second two litres is exactly the thing the red channel is looking for.

The arithmetic that decides this: UK prices include 20% VAT that a visitor can no longer reclaim (the retail export scheme in Great Britain is gone; the one route left is having the shop ship the goods directly abroad), the pound stood at about ₹126.6 on 16 October 2026, and anything above ₹75,000 of new goods per passenger is taxed at 38.5% of the excess on arrival. Against that, India charges basic customs duty plus 18% or 28% GST on most imported consumer goods, so the imported categories are where Britain wins.

Cheaper in the UK (October 2026)

• British-made food and drink — chocolate, biscuits, tea, Scotch within the limit — for the reasons above.
• Perfume, aftershave and branded cosmetics. India levies duty on finished cosmetics and most brands price above UK retail; the UK chemist and department-store chains discount constantly.
• Vitamins and supplements. Own-brand vitamin D, B12, omega-3, glucosamine and iron at £3–10 a tub; the Indian equivalents are either pharmacy prescriptions or imported at a premium.
• Clothes and shoes from the sales, especially leather shoes, children’s wear, wool and cashmere, winter coats and sportswear from the outlet villages. Full-price British high street is not cheaper than Indian malls; sale-price is.
• Lego, board games and licensed merchandise. Indian prices for the same Lego set routinely run a half to two-thirds above the UK shelf price.
• Second-hand and outlet goods — a used camera lens, outlet designer bags — because Indian duty applies to the invoice value and there is none to speak of.

Not cheaper, or not once duty is paid

The pattern holds across electronics. Phones assembled in India (most iPhones, every Samsung and Pixel sold there) are cheaper in India; the rest are close enough that 38.5% duty settles it. Laptops are the exception that proves the rule: one new laptop per adult is duty-free under the 2026 rules, so a MacBook or a ThinkPad bought in a UK sale can make sense — check the Indian price first, because it is often within a few thousand rupees. Televisions are dutiable regardless of value. Dyson, game consoles, headphones, smartwatches and cameras are at or below UK prices in India more often than not, and carry the Indian warranty, which the UK model may not.

Also not cheaper: books (Indian editions are a third of the price), spices and Indian groceries (obviously), medicines (generic Indian prices are a fraction of UK retail, so bring back, do not take), gold (India’s 3% GST on jewellery against the UK’s 20% VAT, plus customs duty on arrival in India at the new 15% general rate — buy there, not here), and eyewear.

Where the sums are close, the deciding factors are warranty, the plug, and whether you want to stand at the red channel explaining a boxed phone. The ₹75,000 figure is per adult passenger and applies to goods carried on the person or in accompanied baggage; a couple travelling together has ₹1,50,000 between them but may not pool it on one item.

The rules changed this year. The Baggage Rules, 2026 (Notification 14/2026-Customs (N.T.), issued 1 February 2026, in force from 2 February 2026) replaced the 2016 rules, and the Customs Baggage (Declaration and Processing) Regulations, 2026 moved the declaration online. CBIC’s Guide for International Travellers (February 2026 edition) is the readable version; the figures below are its.

The general free allowance

On top of that, used personal effects and travel souvenirs are free, one new laptop per passenger aged 18 or over is free, and the allowance of one passenger cannot be pooled with another’s. Unaccompanied baggage gets no general allowance; it is cleared on its own terms (the shipping section). Crew get ₹2,500.

Annexure I: outside the allowance, counted separately

• Cigarettes over 100, cigars over 25, tobacco over 125 g.
• Alcoholic liquor or wine over two litres.
• Gold or silver in any form other than ornaments.
• Television — dutiable from the first rupee.
• Firearms and more than 50 cartridges.

Duty on the excess

The rate on baggage above the allowance is 35% basic customs duty on the value in excess (Notification 26/2016-Customs, re-pointed at the 2026 rules by Notification 04/2026), plus the 10% social welfare surcharge on that duty — 38.5% all in, which is the figure customs houses quote. Duty is charged only on the slice above ₹75,000, and any unused allowance from other items reduces it. Alcohol and tobacco beyond their limits are charged at commercial rates, not 38.5%: Indian customs pages quote 150% for whisky and 256% for cigarettes. You pay at the red channel by card or through ATITHI.

Gold and jewellery

• Jewellery you are wearing or carrying, if you have lived abroad for more than a year: 40 g duty-free for a woman, 20 g for anyone else, with no rupee cap any more. A UK resident visiting for a wedding qualifies; a relative on a short visit does not.
• Gold beyond that, including bars and coins: an "eligible passenger" (an Indian passport holder or person of Indian origin who has stayed abroad at least six months) may bring up to one kilogram, declared at the red channel and paid for in convertible foreign currency, at a concessional rate under Notification 45/2025-Customs. That concession was doubled from 5% to 10% basic duty on 13 May 2026 (Notification 15/2026-Customs), the same day India raised its general gold import duty from 6% to 15%. Customs house pages checked in October 2026 still showed the old 6% beside 36% for anyone not eligible; take the figure ATITHI computes on the day, and expect something between 11% and 15% all-in for an eligible passenger. Buying gold in Britain to carry to India stopped making sense years ago, and the May changes finished it.
• Keep receipts, wear the jewellery through the airport, and if you take your own jewellery out of India, get an Export Certificate (Form CBD-III) so it comes back duty-free.

Cash

• Indian rupees: a resident may bring in or take out no more than ₹25,000 in notes (FEMA Export and Import of Currency Regulations, 2015; RBI FAQ). Nepal and Bhutan have their own rules.
• Foreign currency: no limit, but you must file a Currency Declaration Form if the notes alone exceed US$5,000 or notes plus travellers’ cheques together exceed US$10,000. Unspent currency must be surrendered within 180 days of return; up to US$2,000 may be kept.
• Leaving Great Britain: declare cash of £10,000 or more to HMRC, online or by phone, up to 72 hours before you travel; family members’ cash counts together. Undeclared cash can be seized and a penalty of up to £5,000 charged.

The declaration, the app and the channels

If you carry anything dutiable or prohibited you must declare it electronically in Form CBD-I through the ATITHI 2.0 app or web portal (or ICEGATE), up to three days before you land; the app computes the duty and takes payment. Passengers with nothing to declare walk the green channel. You must take the red channel if you answer "yes" to any of the form’s listed items: jewellery beyond the allowance, gold bullion, a television, meat or dairy or fish or poultry products, seeds or plants or fruit or flowers, a satellite phone, rupees above ₹25,000, foreign currency above the thresholds, drones, pets, or any prohibited article. Walking the green channel with dutiable goods is an offence: confiscation, a fine, and in serious cases prosecution.

If you are moving back for good

Transfer-of-residence allowances replace the ₹75,000 figure: ₹1,50,000 after 3–12 months abroad, ₹3,00,000 after a year in the preceding two, ₹7,50,000 after two years or more (once in three years), including one each of the listed household appliances. The UK country guide covers the paperwork on the British side of a move.

A short list, because the things on it are the ones that end a holiday at the airport.

• E-cigarettes and vapes. Banned outright by the Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act, passed in December 2019: import, sale, transport and storage are offences carrying up to a year in prison or a ₹1 lakh fine for a first offence. A personal device in your bag is confiscated at best. Royal Mail also lists vape products as prohibited in the post to India.
• Drones. Import of drones has been prohibited since 9 February 2022 (DGFT Notification 54/2015-20) except for government, research and defence users with an import authorisation; only components are free. A drone in your luggage must be declared and will be detained; the guide allows detained baggage to be re-exported within six months, so you may get it back on the way out, after paperwork.
• Satellite phones. Thuraya, Iridium and the like are illegal to carry or use without a prior Department of Telecommunications licence. Declare one and it is held until you produce the licence; use one without and you are prosecuted. The CBD-I form asks the question directly.
• Controlled medicines. Narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances are prohibited; that catches several things sold over a UK pharmacy counter or on a routine prescription — codeine combinations, strong sleeping tablets, ADHD medication, some anxiety drugs. Carry them in original packaging with the prescription and the GP’s letter in your name, in quantities for your stay, and declare if asked. Ordinary medicines are not a problem.
• Meat and meat products, dairy, fish, poultry; seeds, plants, fresh fruit, flowers and planting material. These are declarable items on the form because they need quarantine clearance, and the intent is cheese, cured meat, raw honey, seeds for the garden and a mango sapling, not a sealed bar of chocolate. If you do carry a whole cheddar, declare it. Infant formula travelling with the infant has never been the target either, but it is a dairy product; keep it sealed and in the hand luggage with the baby.
• Commercial quantities. Ten identical phones, forty perfumes or a case of the same whisky are "goods in commercial quantity" and cannot be cleared as baggage even on payment of duty. The test is whether a reasonable person would believe it is for personal use or gifts.
• Also prohibited: maps or literature showing India’s external boundaries incorrectly, wildlife products (ivory, shahtoosh, coral, tortoiseshell), counterfeit currency, goods infringing intellectual property (a suitcase of fake branded trainers), specified live birds and animals, and firearms and ammunition without the permits.
• Pets. Two cats or dogs per passenger, only under transfer of residence after two years abroad, with an advance No Objection Certificate from Animal Quarantine applied for through ATITHI (₹1,000 fee) and a final check at the airport. Not a holiday-visit option.

Two things are not prohibited but trip people up: a second laptop (the first is free; the second is dutiable), and a television of any size (dutiable from the first rupee). And on the British side there is nothing to stop you taking goods out of the UK, apart from the cash declaration above and CITES-listed items.

Allowances differ by airline, by cabin and by fare family, and the airline can change them between the day you book and the day you fly, so the only figure that counts is the one on your ticket or in Manage My Booking. The published position in October 2026:

Three details matter more than the headline numbers. No single bag may weigh more than 32 kg anywhere; a bag between 23 kg and 32 kg over your allowance pays a heavy-bag charge. Two pieces of 23 kg is 46 kg, which is more than most people can carry through Delhi arrivals; two medium cases beat one giant. And an extra bag is usually cheaper bought online in advance — BA’s pre-paid extra bag on an India flight is about £65 online against about £100 at the desk, according to agents who sell them, and Air India sells pre-paid excess by the piece or kilo in Manage My Booking; Virgin is the exception, charging the same at online check-in and at the airport and showing the price in its baggage calculator.

IndiGo’s leased wide-body flights from Manchester ended in August 2026 and its Heathrow service was reported to be ending in late October as the lease ran out, so do not plan a two-bag allowance around it without checking the airline is still flying the route.

What goes where

Power banks and spare lithium batteries go in the cabin bag only — every carrier now says so, and BA forbids them in the hold outright. Liquids in the cabin are 100 ml containers in one clear bag; the whisky, the perfume and the jam go in the hold. Chocolate goes in the hold too (the cabin is warmer than you think, and the overhead locker is warmer still). Keep the receipts for anything new in your hand luggage: customs values a boxed item on the receipt if you have one and on its own table if you do not.

If you are flying Heathrow–Delhi for the Diwali weeks, book bags when you book the seat: the flights are full, the fare family you chose decides the free allowance, and the airport desk is the dearest place to discover you needed one more.

Most of the disappointment on arrival is not customs, it is a suitcase that has been dropped from a conveyor in 35°C. The habits that prevent it:

• Bottles in the middle. Each bottle in a sealed bag, inside a sock, wrapped in two layers of clothes, in the centre of the case, never against a wall or in an outside pocket. Padded wine sleeves cost a few pounds and are worth it for anything over £30. Tape the lids of jars. Split the two litres between two bags so one accident is not both bottles.
• Chocolate in a cool box, not a bag. A cheap insulated bag or a small polystyrene cool box in the hold case keeps bars solid through a Delhi winter arrival and a Mumbai monsoon one; nothing keeps them solid through a May afternoon in Chennai, so buy the chocolate for a summer trip at the airport and carry it on, or send it with someone travelling in winter. Tubs survive better than bars; bars survive better than filled chocolates.
• Tins and biscuits packed tight. A tin in a case with room to move arrives dented and its contents arrive as dust. Fill every gap with clothes. Put the shortbread flat on the bottom with the clothes above, not on top under the lid.
• Batteries and electronics in the cabin. Power banks under 100 Wh, spare camera batteries and anything with a lithium cell stay with you. A laptop goes through security on its own; its charger does not need to.
• Perfume and aerosols in the hold, upright, in a bag; aerosols within the airline’s per-person limit (usually 2 kg or 2 L in total).
• Woollens are the padding. Cardigans and scarves for the parents double as the wrapping for everything fragile.
• Weigh at home. A £10 luggage scale pays for itself the first time it stops a £65 charge. Pack to 22 kg, not 23: scales at the airport are not yours.
• Documents and the declaration before you leave. Your passport, visa or OCI card (check its validity rules against your new passport), the ATITHI declaration if you have anything to declare, and the receipts for anything new, all in the hand luggage. If your Indian passport is near expiry, deal with it before the trip, not after.
• Nothing for strangers. However kind the request, you sign the declaration and you answer for the contents.

One habit from the other direction: photograph the contents of each case before you close it. If a bag goes missing on Heathrow–Delhi, the airline’s Property Irregularity Report and your photographs are what the claim is built on, and Indian customs endorses the report so the airline can deliver the bag to your door without you.

When the suitcase will not do — a wedding trousseau, a year of accumulated things, a Diwali box for parents when you are not flying — there are four ways to send it, and one tax rule that applies to all of them.

The duty rule first

Since 12 December 2019 (DGFT Notification 35/2015-20) India does not admit "gifts" by post or courier duty-free except rakhi and life-saving medicines; anything else is cleared as an import on payment of full duty, however it is labelled. Writing gift on the CN22 therefore buys nothing. What has changed is the rate: from 1 April 2026 the Finance Act halved the basic customs duty on goods imported for personal use (heading 9804) from 20% to 10%, with the 10% social welfare surcharge on that duty, for all personal imports including gifts. The recipient therefore pays roughly 31% — 10% basic duty, 1% surcharge, then 18% IGST on the total — of the CIF value, which is the goods plus the postage. A parcel of £80 of chocolate and clothes with £20 postage is valued at about ₹12,700 and attracts about ₹3,900 of duty. Customs house FAQs written before April still show 42–44% for gifts and 31% for self-purchased goods; the newer figure applies now. By post (not courier) a consignment whose duty would come to ₹1,000 or less is let through free, which covers a parcel worth roughly ₹3,200 including postage. The recipient must also supply KYC — Aadhaar, PAN, passport or voter ID — to the courier or post office before release, which is the step that holds most parcels up.

Royal Mail (up to 2 kg)

International Tracked (from £11.40, 5–7 working days), International Standard (from £3.60, 5–7 working days) and International Economy (from £3.50, delivery aim 56 days) all take parcels up to 2 kg and 90 cm in combined dimensions; Tracked & Signed is documents only. A 2 kg small parcel to India was about £37 under the April 2026 tables, and Royal Mail changed prices again on 5 October 2026, so use its price finder. You need electronic customs data and a CN22 (under £270) or CN23 (over £270) with the recipient’s phone number and email on it. Royal Mail’s own prohibited list for India includes vapes, firearms, and — oddly — digital cameras, wired phones and televisions; check it before you post.

Parcelforce and the couriers (up to 30 kg)

Parcelforce globalpriority and globalexpress take boxes up to 30 kg and 1.5 m to India (delivery zone 12), quoted in 3–7 working days; the express couriers (DHL, FedEx, UPS) are faster and dearer. Prices are by weight and volume on each carrier’s site and a 10 kg box at retail runs well into three figures. Gold, silver and precious stones, plants and animal products, perishables and anything restricted cannot go by courier at all.

Indian cargo agents and "unaccompanied baggage"

Around Heathrow, in Southall, Hounslow, Leicester and Birmingham, dozens of agents sell consolidated air freight to Indian airports by the kilo, with sea freight by the cubic metre for a house move. Two things to know. First, the per-kilo headline is never the price: add collection, documentation, the airline’s terminal charges, Indian clearing and delivery, and ask for the all-in figure in writing before you hand over a box. Second, the customs treatment depends on timing: if the box is in your possession abroad and dispatched within one month after you land in India (or lands up to two months before you), it is cleared as unaccompanied baggage under Rule 10 — used personal effects free, new goods at 38.5%, declared in Form CBD-II — but it gets no ₹75,000 allowance, which is for accompanied baggage only. Outside that window it is an ordinary import.

A rough map of time and cost (October 2026)

For a box under 23 kg, the airline is almost always the cheapest courier you will find.

The return trip has its own rules, and they bite harder on food than India’s do.

Worth the weight

Spices and tea from where they are grown, pickles and papad, pulses and rice if you have a brand you miss, cotton and silk, tailoring, jewellery, Ayurvedic and herbal products without animal ingredients, books in Indian editions, handicrafts, and medicines you have a prescription for — generics in India cost a fraction of UK retail. Also the documents: a renewed passport, attested certificates, a police clearance if you are between visas, the things the jobs guide says a UK employer will ask for.

Britain’s personal allowances from outside the UK

Goods worth up to £390 (about ₹49,000; £270 if you arrive by private plane or boat); 4 litres of spirits or 9 litres of fortified wine or sparkling wine, plus 18 litres of still wine and 42 litres of beer; 200 cigarettes or 50 cigars or 250 g of tobacco, splittable. Go over in any category and you pay import VAT and customs duty on the whole value of that category, not just the excess, declared online from five days before you land or at the red point on arrival. A ₹60,000 gold bangle is over the £390 line on its own; declare it, with the receipt.

Food: what cannot come in

• No meat and no dairy from India, in any form: that means ghee, paneer, khoya, pedas, kalakand, milk cake, any sweet made with milk solids, butter, cheese, and sandwiches or snacks containing them. Chocolate, biscuits, cakes without fresh cream and packaged soups are fine.
• Honey up to 2 kg, fish up to 20 kg (gutted), powdered infant milk and medical foods in unopened branded packs.
• Most fresh fruit and vegetables need a phytosanitary certificate, which in practice means do not. The list that is allowed without one includes, usefully, mango, banana, coconut, dates, citrus, pineapple, guava, passion fruit and curry leaves. Processed and packaged plant products — dried spices, pickles, papad, rice and other grains, packaged snacks — are fine; peeled and processed nuts are fine; whole nuts in shell are not.

India’s rules on the way out

No more than ₹25,000 in rupees; genuine antiques over a hundred years old need an Archaeological Survey permit; nothing made from wildlife — ivory, shahtoosh, coral, tortoiseshell, certain feathers — however old the shop says it is; and if you are taking out jewellery you intend to bring back on a later visit, an Export Certificate through ATITHI saves an argument next time.

Medicines

Personal-use medicines with a prescription in your name are fine to bring into the UK; controlled drugs (certain painkillers, sleeping tablets, ADHD medication) need a personal licence if you carry more than three months’ supply, and antibiotics bought over the counter in India are prescription-only here, so carry the prescription. Keep everything in its original packaging.

Family members bringing things to you from India face the same list in reverse; send them the dairy rule in particular, because the sweet box is the one thing Border Force opens every day of the year.

Rules on this page were checked in October 2026 and dated; shelf prices, airline fare families and the state-by-state price of a bottle of Scotch move faster than any guide can. Three places to check the live answer before you shop:

• Ask — post the specific question ("Dairy Milk to Hyderabad in April, cabin or hold?", "Did anyone pay duty on a boxed laptop at Delhi T3 this month?", "Which Southall cargo agent gave an all-in price?") and people who flew last week answer. Search first; the duty-on-a-phone question has been asked many times.
• Groups in the UK — the city groups are where a request for "anyone flying to Kochi before Diwali with a spare kilo" gets answered, and where a bad experience with an agent is reported first.
• The directory — Indian grocers, sweet shops, jewellers and cargo agents in the UK, with reviews from members, when you want to send a box rather than carry one.

If something on this page has gone stale — an airline changed its allowance, a notification changed a rate — use the report link beside the section and the desk will check it.