Many travellers who take cheap flights to Delhi will see it only fleetingly as they connect to other parts of India, but to do so is to miss a teeming, colourful, cosmopolitan and endlessly fascinating city.
Delhi's history stretches back two-and-a-half-millennia and today's metropolis is thought to be the 16th city that has been on this site. There are two Delhis, the old and the new.
Old Delhi is wonderfully chaotic, where New Delhi is mostly stately and well-ordered. Old Delhi is a warren of streets and a tangle of roads, a skyline with blocks upon blocks upon blocks. It centres around the Chandi Chowk, a bustling market where you can buy almost anything. This street runs from the Lahore Gate of the Red Fort (built by Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor, in the 17th century) to the Fatehpuri Masjid (built by Fatehpuri Begum, one of Shah Jahan's wives).
New Delhi has wide, tree-lined boulevards, spacious parks and imposing buildings. It was constructed between 1912 and 1929 (Sir Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker were the architects) to replace Kolkata as the capital of British India. The streets radiate out from Connaught Place and just two of the highlights of this part of the city are India Gate and Parliament House, but New Delhi also contains the Jantar Mantar, an outdoor astronomical observatory that dates from the 18th century, and the dargah of Hazrat Khawaja Nizamuddin Auliya.
This collision of new and old, planned and organic is what gives Delhi its energy and, many Indians believe, its soul.
