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It is common knowledge that Delhi is daunting.

As I’m hustled into a taxi when I arrive I remind myself, this is a city and a country where god has a lower case but spiritually is all-important and non-negotiable. When I ask my cab driver how the newly opened metro will affect his business, he says with the typical Indian shrug, “it would take a lot of traffic off the streets.”

“But how will it affect your business,” I probe.

He smiles. “There is a god. He always provides.”

In this seemingly chaotic city with its 15million inhabitants, there is order. Pedestrians, limousines, taxis, rikshaws, bicycles, beggars and motorbikes and scooters – piled with entire families - all mingle, often within a hair’s breadth of one another in this miasma of traffic.

The incessant noise is clearly the result of the injunction on many vehicles to ‘please hoot’.

I check in at the private guest house in Gurguan, one of the new suburbs on the outskirts of this rapidly expanding city late in the evening. The next morning I greet Kalu, the diminutive, delicate man who bring me a China cup filled with hot, sweet chai: “How are you?”

“Same to you, mem,” Kalu beams. So my days open pleasantly with a housekeeper who doesn’t speak English but is achingly sweet.

But from the gentle garden with its Lodi tree I have to fling myself into the traffic for the drive into New Delhi. I am not dettered: every turn of the wheel reveals another fascinating vista of ancient architecture, cows, dogs, human and perambulated traffic.

It takes me three hours from Garguan to the hub of the city. The one and only bumper bashing I witneses is along a newly-opened highway where we drive at the dizzying speed of 50kms per hourThe bumper bashing, I realize, happened because the first car skidded to a halt to avoid the cow that decided to amble across the five-lane highway. .  It is the dense traffic that obviates speeding – and serious accidents.

Lane is a misnomer here. Wherever there is a gap in the traffic is where you will aim your vehicle – and many is the time I witness a rickshaw and a two-storey high pantechnicon head for the same opening. I realize the thinking behind ‘please hoot’. The idea is, meaneuver into the traffic knowing that all you have to do is to announce your presence. You look out for the traffic next to, and in front of you. Those behind you need to watch out for you. And it works.

I’m heading for one of the top restaurants in the world, Bukhara, where executive chef JP Singh has been presenting the same menu – etched into a slice  of tree trunk – since 1978.

India is not simply a country of curries, and Delhi is a delight for gourmands searching for the delicate tones that the substantial array of Indian gastronomy offers. Having said that, the more commercial the restaurant, I found, the more they play to the bland-down tourist palate. It is in fact in the little neighbourhood restaurant eatery frequented by the locals, where the gastronomic gems are to be found.

The city presents cuisine from across the vast country but mostly, North Indian food. Street food, roadside Dhabas, low budget restaurants for the locals and smart restaurants all have fabulously fresh and fragrant thandoori chicken, kababs, rotis chaat, bhelpuri, sweetmeats and biryani. It’s also a vegetarian’s paradise and virtually nothing contains the holy cow of India.

 The cave-like Bukhara in the Mauraya Sheraton Hotel in New Delhi is a favourite among the affluent locals as well as gourmand travelers. It is the intensely flavoured North-West frontier cuisine, its tandoors, and the slow-cooked Dal Bukhara, a flavourful lentil dahl with tomatoes, ginger, garlic and butter loved by the likes of Bill Clinton, a loyal supporter whenever he visits the city.

Comparing the so-called shopping mecca of Dubai to Delhi is like comparing an innocent wink to an Indian wedding. Delhi is the most important trading centre in northern India and the area of Gurguan, which used to be farmland until relatively recently, sprung up because of the economic boom over last ten years. In line with the government’s ‘superpower’ drive, there is evidence everywhere of an economy on the rise. The building of smart new houses, renovations of old ones and newly opened shopping malls stand shoulder to shoulder like newly-outfitted soldiers readying themselves for the onslaught. Most of the city offers markets, New Delhi, designer boutiques, but if malls are your thing, head for Goargun, where shopping centre are going up faster than your taxi fare in a non-Government approved taxi.

Markets have spruced up their appearance and goods sold reflect a wide array of magnificent Indian handicrafts like carpets, silver, jewellery and silks from across the country. Dilly Haat is one of the best.

If designer ripoffs is your bent, Delhi is heaven. At one of the many markets, I am thrilled to discover MAC cosmetics at a fraction of the cost. After I’ve chosen a few items and move to pay for them, I am told as a matter of fact, “they’re of course not real”. I’d frankly prefer to wear a real pendant from a chain store rather than a ripoff designer one. But those, as well as low-qualtiy DVDs and the like are available in abundance.

I try ceaselessly and in vain through the days to capture on camera the dense, multi sensory Delhi traffic. I decide on the spur of the moment, rather than sitting in car for hour after interminable hour, to take the train from my guest house into New Delhi. I hail a rickshaw and after some discussion with a growing group of people by the roadside, not one of whom speaks English, we set off.

I sit on the back of that rickshaw shining like a white neon sign in the midday Indian sun.The rickshaw spends the trip playing dodgems with the traffic – and everyone is cool, including the cows. It takes almost an hour of side streets, suburbs inhabited by chickens and cows while everyone else is at work, and going down highways the wrong way before we reach our desination. The train station turns out to be a neighbourhood one where trains from the northern parts of the country pick up even more passengers on the outskirts of the city to take them into the centre. Every nook and cranny is packed; those at the end of a long journey, lying across the hard top bunks.

Everyone is patient and quiet. And everyone stares (it’s clearly not considered rude) and smiles shyly when I make eye contact. One person speaks English: “people are friendly here because of God. Have you seen all the temples?”

Yesterday the smog was intensified by low cloud. The day was dense, dark, the wind shoving the roadside debris around. Then, at dusk, torrents of rain. Today, with the cloying grime cleaned, the city’s green gleams and the day sparkles.

I’m off to a modern Indian restaurant where there are signs, ‘smoking zone’ and ‘non-alcoholic zone’.  I don’t know where to sit; it’s all a little confusing. The waiter tries to explain: India is like an elephant that shows one tooth and tucks away the other.

I’m smitten.

THINGS TO DO

Be prepared to look past the worn and dirty edges of the city and focus on the beauty.

Shop at the Dilli Haat craft market

Have your eyes wide open with taxi drivers and their fares

Be prepared to negotiate hard

Drink the good local Gin or beer rather than the expensive wine

Buy books. I even found leather-bound classics at such reasonable prices that I wanted to weep into my Gin thinking of what I would have to leave behind weight-wise

Stroll through Lodi Gardens

DON’T

Fall for the cabdriver’s injunctions of “just look” at one of the countless of curious shops.

Go the underground Palika bazaar unless you can put up with being harangued

CONTACT

Bukhara

Hotel Mauraya Sheraton Hotel and Towers

Diplomatic Enclave

Sardar Patel Marg

New Delhi

Phone +91 (0)11 2611 2233