Delhi

Delhi is not one city and never has been — at least seven have stood here, and most of them are still lying around in pieces. Two of them organise a visit. Shahjahanabad, which everyone calls Old Delhi, is lanes barely wide enough for a cycle rickshaw, wholesale bazaars sorted by trade, and the courtyard of Jama Masjid. Lutyens' New Delhi is the opposite argument: hundred-metre avenues, roundabouts, sandstone laid out for viceroys. Walk one before noon and the other after four and you have understood the city. Start at Humayun's Tomb rather than the obvious list. It is the building the Taj Mahal was drawn from, sixty years earlier, and it is far quieter. Then Mehrauli Archaeological Park, immediately behind the Qutb Minar, which almost nobody enters — acres of tombs and stepwells with goats grazing between them. On Thursday evenings there is qawwali at Nizamuddin Dargah: go barefoot, sit at the back, do not photograph faces. The honest warning is the air. From November to mid-January it is dangerous, not just unpleasant, and no amount of planning gets around it. If you have a choice of month, come in February.