Welcome to New Delhi, the capital of India, the third largest city in the country. The sprawling city divided into Old Delhi and New Delhi, gives the feel of the old and the new, with its ancient historical monuments interspersed with soaring skyscrapers, embassies and bustling commercial complexes. The city, a major travel gateway hub has extreme climates, immense heat waves during summer and chilly coldness during winter.

You can you go from marvelling at the sheer grace of the soaring Qutab Minar tower, built in 1199 by the Turkish Slave King Qutb-ud-din Aibak to celebrate his victory over the Hindu Rajputs, to gawking at that 1920s British imperialist masterpiece, the palatial Rashtrapati Bhavan. You can wander through the sculptural Jantar Mantar, a huge, open-air astrological observatory built in 1725 by Jai Singh, creator and ruler of Jaipur, to the still-sacred atmosphere surrounding the tomb of the 14th-century Sufi saint, Sheikh Nizamuddin Aulia, or the 16th-century garden tomb of the Mughal Emperor Humayun, precursor to the Taj. Or, after the chaos of exploring the crowded streets of 17th-century Shahjahanabad, Delhi's oldest living city, you can escape to Rajghat, the park where Gandhi was cremated in 1948, or to the Lodi Gardens, where lawns and golfing greens are studded with the crumbling 15th-century tombs of once powerful dynasties. And still you haven't covered the half of it.. .. But despite its host of attractions, unless you're staying in one of its top hotels (of which the Imperial is almost a destination in its own right), Delhi is not a very relaxing destination, and it is as famous for its pollution (it was rated the 4th most polluted city in the world through the 1990s) as it is for its sights.