Delhi

Delhi is the symbol of old India and new…even the stones here whisper to our ears of the ages of long ago and the air we breathe is full of the dust and fragrances of the past, as also of the fresh and piercing winds of the present.

India’s capital, DELHI is the hub of the country, a buzzing international metropolis which draws people from across India and the globe. Home to fifteen million people, it’s big, sprawling and still growing. Yet tucked away inside Delhi’s modern suburbs and developments are tombs, temples and ruins dating back centuries; in some places, the remains of whole cities from the dim and distant past nestle among homes and highways built in just the last decade or two. The result is a city full of fascinating nooks and crannies that you could happily spend weeks or even months exploring.

From a tourist’s perspective, Delhi is divided into two main parts. Old Delhi is the city of the Mughals and dates back to the seventeenth century. It’s the capital’s most frenetic quarter, and its most Islamic, a reminder that for over seven hundred years Delhi was a Muslim-ruled city. While many of the buildings enclosing Old Delhi’s teeming bazaars have a tale to tell, its greatest monuments are undoubtedly the magnificent constructions of the Mughals, most notably the mighty Red Fort, and the Jama Masjid, India’s largest and most impressive mosque.

To the south, encompassing the modern city centre, is New Delhi, built by the British to be the capital of their empire’s key possession. A spacious city of tree-lined boulevards, New Delhi is impressive in its own way. The Rajpath, stretching from India Gate to the Presidential Palace, is at least as mighty a statement of imperial power as the Red Fort, and it’s among the broad avenues of New Delhi that you’ll find most of the city’s museums, not to mention its prime shopping area, centred around the colonnaded facades of Connaught Place, the heart of downtown Delhi.

As the city expands, however – which it is doing at quite a pace – the centre of New Delhi is becoming too small to house the shops, clubs, bars and restaurants needed to cater to the affluent and growing middle class. Many businesses are moving into South Delhi, the vast area beyond the colonial city. Here, among the modern developments, and new business and shopping areas, is where you’ll find some of Delhi’s most ancient and fascinating attractions. Facing each other at either end of Lodi Road, for example, lie the constructions marking two ends of the great tradition of Mughal garden tombs: Humayun’s Tomb, its genesis, and Safdarjang’s Tomb, its last gasp. Here too, you’ll find the remains of six cities which preceded Old Delhi, most notably the Qutb Minar and the rambling ruins of Tughluqabad.

As a place to hit India for the first time, Delhi isn’t a bad choice. The city is used to foreigners: hotels in all price ranges cater specifically for foreign tourists, and you’ll meet plenty of experienced fellow travellers who can give you tips and pointers. And there’s certainly no shortage of things to see and do while you acclimatize yourself to the Subcontinent. Quite apart from its historical treasures, Delhi has a host of museums and art treasures, cultural performances and crafts that provide a showcase of the country’s diverse heritage. The city’s growing nightlife scene boasts designer bars, chic cafés and decent clubs. Its auditoriums host a wide range of national music and dance events, drawing on the richness of India’s great classical traditions. Smart new cinemas screen the latest offerings from both Hollywood and Bollywood, while its theatres hold performances in Hindi and in English. And if it’s from Delhi that you’re flying home, you’ll find that you can buy goods here from pretty much anywhere else in India, so it’s a good place to stock up with souvenirs and presents.

Delhi is both daunting and alluring, a sprawling metropolis with a stunning backdrop of ancient architecture. Once you’ve found your feet and got over the initial impact of the commotion, noise, pollution and sheer scale of the place, the city’s geography slowly slips into focus. Monuments in assorted states of repair are dotted around the city, especially in Old Delhi and in southern enclaves such as Hauz Khas. The British-built modern city centres on Connaught Place, the heart of New Delhi (though actually on its northern edge), from which it’s easy – by taxi, bus, auto-rickshaw or metro – to visit pretty much anywhere else in town.

NEW DELHI

The modern area of NEW DELHI, with its wide tree-lined avenues and solid colonial architecture, has been the seat of central government since 1931. At its hub, the royal mall, Rajpath, runs from the palatial Rashtrapati Bhavan, in the west, to the India Gate war memorial in the east. Its wide grassy margins are a popular meeting place for families, picnickers and courting couples. The National Museum is located just south of the central intersection. At the north edge of the new capital lies the thriving business centre, Connaught Place, where neon advertisements for restaurants, bars and banks adorn the flat roofs and colonnaded verandas of the white buildings that circle its central park.
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• Rashtrapati Bhavan and Rajpath

  Rashtrapati Bhavan and Rajpath

  After George V, king of England and emperor of British India, decreed in 1911 that Delhi should replace Calcutta as the capital of India, the English architect Edwin Lutyens was commissioned to plan the new governmental centre. Rashtrapati Bhavan, the official residence of the president of India, is one of the largest and most grandiose of the Raj constructions, built by Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker between 1921 and 1929. Despite its classical columns, Mughal-style domes and chhatris and Indian filigree work, the whole building is unmistakably British in character. Its majestic proportions are best appreciated from India Gate to the east – though with increasing pollution, the view is often clouded by a smoggy haze. The apartments inside are strictly private, but the gardens at the west side are open to the public for two weeks each February (free). Modelled on Mughal pleasure parks, with a typically ordered square pattern of quadrants dissected by waterways and refreshed by fountains, Lutyens’ gardens extend beyond the normal confines to include tennis courts, butterfly enclosures, vegetable and fruit patches and a swimming pool.
  Vijay Chowk, immediately in front of Rashtrapati Bhavan, leads into the wide, straight Rajpath, flanked with gardens and fountains that are floodlit at night, and the scene of annual Republic Day celebrations (Jan 26). Rajpath runs east to India Gate. Designed by Lutyens in 1921, the high arch, reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, commemorates ninety thousand Indian soldiers killed fighting for the British in World War I, and bears the names of more than three thousand British and Indian soldiers who died on the Northwest frontier and in the Afghan War of 1919. The extra memorial beneath the arch honours the lives lost in the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971.

• Connaught Place

  New Delhi’s commercial hub, Connaught Place (known as “CP”), with its classical colonnades, is radically different from the bazaars of Old Delhi, which it superseded. Named after a minor British royal of the day, it takes the form of a circle, divided by eight radial roads and three ring roads into blocks lettered A–N. The term Connaught Place originally referred to the inner circle (now renamed Rajiv Chowk after Rajiv Gandhi), the outer one being Connaught Circus (now Indira Chowk, after Rajiv’s mum). CP is crammed with restaurants, bars, shops, cinemas, banks and airline offices.

• Paharganj

  North of Connaught Place and directly west of New Delhi railway station, Paharganj, centred around Main Bazaar, provides the first experience of the Subcontinent for many budget travellers. Packed with cheap hotels, restaurants, cafés and dhabas, and with a busy fruit and vegetable market halfway along, it’s also a paradise for shoestring shoppers seeking psychedelic clothing, joss sticks, bags and oils of patchouli or sandalwood.
  There is also a less-visible underside to life in Paharganj, in the shape of the street children. Most are runaways who’ve left difficult homes, often hundreds of kilometres away, and the majority sleep on the streets and inhale solvents to numb their pain. The Salaam Baalak Trust (www.salaambaalaktrust.com), a local NGO working to help them, organizes walking tours of Paharganj conducted by former street children. Tours last two hours, usually start at 10am and cost Rs200. Proceeds go towards providing shelter, education and healthcare for the area’s street children.
• National Museum

OLD DELHI

Though it’s not in fact the oldest part of Delhi, the seventeenth-century city of Shahjahanabad, built for the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, is known as OLD DELHI. Construction began on the city in 1638, and within eleven years it was substantially complete, surrounded by over 8km of ramparts pierced by fourteen main gates. It boasted a beautiful main thoroughfare, Chandni Chowk, an imposing citadel, the Red Fort (Lal Qila), and an impressive congregational mosque, the Jama Masjid. Today much of the wall has crumbled, and of the fourteen gates only four remain, but it’s still a fascinating area, crammed with interesting nooks and crannies, though you’ll need stamina, patience, time and probably a fair few chai stops along the way to endure the crowds and traffic. Old Delhi is served by metro stations at Chandni Chowk (actually nearer Old Delhi train station), Chawri Bazaar, and the Ajmeri Gate side of New Delhi railway station (the metro stop’s name of “New Delhi” is in this instance misleading).
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• The Red Fort (Lal Qila)
• Jama Masjid

  Jama Masjid

  A wonderful piece of Mughal pomp, the red-and-white Jama Masjid is India’s largest mosque. Its courtyard is large enough to accommodate the prostrated bodies of 25,000 worshippers. It was designed by Shah Jahan and built by a workforce of five thousand people between 1644 and 1656. Originally called Masjid-i-Jahanuma (“mosque commanding a view of the world”), this grand structure stands on Bho Jhala, one of Shahjahanabad’s two hills, and looks east to the sprawling Red Fort, and down on the seething streets of Old Delhi. Broad, red-sandstone staircases lead to gateways on the east, north and southern sides, where worshippers and visitors alike must remove their shoes (the custodian will guard them for you for a small tip).
  Once inside the courtyard, your eyes will be drawn to the three bulbous marble domes crowning the main prayer hall on the west side (facing Mecca), fronted by a series of high cusped arches, and sheltering the mihrab, the central niche in the west wall indicating the direction of prayer. The pool in the centre is used for ritual ablutions. At each corner of the square yard a slender minaret crowned with a marble dome rises to the sky, and it’s worth climbing the tower south of the main sanctuary for a view over Delhi. In the northeast corner a white shrine protects a collection of Muhammad’s relics, including his sandals, a hair from his beard, and his “footprint” miraculously embedded in a marble slab.
• Chandni Chowk
  Old Delhi’s main thoroughfare, Chandni Chowk was once a sublime canal lined with trees and some of the most opulent bazaars in the whole of Asia. The British paved over the canal after 1857. In 2007, the courts ordered a daytime ban on cycle rickshaws along the street, and they were replaced by a fleet of green minibuses, but the ban has been challenged and may not last. In any event, the best way to take it in is on foot. Along it, look out for numbered “heritage buildings” signposted at intervals, with placards outside explaining their historical importance, especially during the 1857 uprising.
• Raj Ghat