We have arrived at Delhi, at the neck of India if you take the region of Kashmir to be the head. First things first, get it right. It’s dell-ee with a silent “h” not dell-hee.

I suppose after seeing, hearing, smelling and sweating in Bombay I developed natural shock absorbers from what I witnessed in Delhi. Being the second largest mega-city in India you feel the place being awash with people, elbowing and jostling their way as they hustle on with their daily lives. Like Bombay, traffic here is a daily endurance exercise but it is far more efficient getting from one place to another because of the Delhi Metro. The metro is a magnificent study in modern transportation that breaks the stereotypical sluggish overcrowded chug-chugs we see in photos. It is fast, clean, punctual and devoid of supplementary seating on the roof.

For city commuting, Delhi beats Bombay with ease and so gives much more time to explore its famed monuments which date back much further than just the British Raj. Old Delhi was a city controlled by the Mughals who ruler over northern India for a good three centuries so it is here that you can have a visual feast of its gloriously opulent architecture, among them the tomb of Emperor Humayun – a crypt to mark death in paradise, Qut’b Minar – the longest standing minaret in the world and the Red Fort – where Independence Day speeches are read out.

All three have been designated as UNESCO world heritage sites which offer plenty of opportunity to show of your photography skills. If these three sites can’t satisfy your appetite for domes and minarets, Agra is just four hours away on land for the most precious of Mughal edifices, the Taj Mahal. Emperor Shah Jahan’s loving ode to his third wife has been regarded as the closest mankind can come to physical perfection.

Delhi is an archway to an enthrallingly majestic past; and yeah, you can almost hear the sitar-plucking soundtrack as I say that.

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