Delhi

Delhi has been destroyed and rebuilt so often that historians settled on a number — seven cities — and then kept finding more. You can drive from a twelfth-century minaret in Mehrauli to a 1930s viceroy's avenue in twenty minutes, past tombs that people use as shortcuts and cricket pitches.

Almost nobody likes Delhi on the first day. It is loud, enormous and entirely indifferent to you. Give it three days and it starts handing things over: a courtyard, a meal, directions from a stranger delivered as a ten-minute monologue.

Delhi argues about food the way other cities argue about football. Old Delhi does kebabs and korma in the lanes around Jama Masjid; Punjabi families who arrived after Partition in 1947 gave the city butter chicken and its whole idea of a good evening.

On Thursday evenings qawwali is sung at Nizamuddin Dargah as it has been for centuries — sit at the back, cover your head, and stay past the first song. The Sunday book market on Daryaganj and the Lodhi Garden tombs at dusk are the city simply being itself, with no ticket involved.

Use the metro — clean, cheap, and faster than any car in Delhi traffic — and take a cycle rickshaw only inside Old Delhi, where nothing wider fits. Eat breakfast at a halwai in Chandni Chowk or Karol Bagh, not at the hotel buffet. Sunder Nursery, next door to Humayun's Tomb, is the best hour in the city and most visitors skip it. Fix fares before starting, or use an app.

Delhi's monuments double as neighbourhood parks — dress as though you are in someone's locality, because you are. Decline the 'government emporium' detour a driver offers; it is a commission racket, not a shop. Refill your bottle instead of buying six a day.

Travellers who take to Delhi's layers usually love Kolkata — another loud, literary, food-obsessed capital carrying a colonial hangover, and better sweets. Two hours by air, or one night on the train.