Delhi City Guide - overview

Through a sweltering bazaar with each vendor crying out louder than the next, clamouring through a sweaty crowd, a beggar tugs at your shirt as the sticky stench of the city pierces your nostrils. Navigate your way across the road through a perennial traffic jam of blasting horns and angry shouts, and suddenly you'll find yourself stepping through the trees into a deserted courtyard, flanked by gurgling ponds below the huge glittering dome of an ornately patterned mosque.

This is Delhi, city of contrasts, where an elephant can overtake an overheated Italian sports car on the streets, where colonial mansion stands next to squatter slum, and where cows are revered, but musicians are labelled 'untouchable'. The city's pace is chaotic, yet fairly relaxed, and makes it ideal for exploring. You're certain to be confronted with some strange and exotic sights.

With a long and troubled history, Delhi is full of fascinating temples, museums, mosques and forts, each with a distinct architectural style. In Old Delhi, visitors will find a charming selection of colourful bazaars and narrow winding alleys. In comparison, New Delhi - the city created to reflect the might of the British Empire - consists of tree-lined avenues, spacious parks and sombre-looking government buildings.

While Delhi itself could take a lifetime to explore, it's also ideal as a base for visiting the Taj Mahal in Agra, and it provides the best links for travelling to the hill stations of the North.

Getting around: Fleets of metered taxis and auto-rickshaws clog the streets of Delhi providing transport for locals and visitors. Rates fluctuate, but drivers should have rate charts available and tourists should ensure the meter is reset or a price negotiated before departure. A ring railway starts and ends at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station with trains running in both clockwise and anti-clockwise directions around the city. Delhi Transport Corporation runs a large fleet of buses covering the entire city, but these are always overcrowded. The frequency of buses drops during the off-peak time between 1pm and 2.30pm. There are night service buses on selected routes and from the three main railway stations between 11pm and 5am. The first line of an ambitious Mass Rapid Transport System (MRTS) was recently opened covering 14 miles (22km) and18 stations between Shahdara, Tri Nagar and Rithala. A further two lines are under construction and the entire project is scheduled for completion by 2021.