New Delhi: the planned capital and the applicant's city

The capital's spine runs about three kilometres from the war memorial arch at one end to the presidential estate at the other, along an avenue flanked by lawns, water channels and the ministry blocks. India Gate, the arch itself, is a memorial to Indian soldiers who died in the First World War and in the Afghan campaign that followed; their names are carved across it, and it remains a place of national commemoration rather than a decorative landmark. At the far end, Rashtrapati Bhavan — the presidential residence, and one of the largest such buildings anywhere — is Lutyens' synthesis of European classicism with Indian form, most obviously in a dome that quotes a Buddhist stupa on a Roman drum. Parliament and the ministry buildings complete the composition, and the newer parliament building sits alongside the old. The scale is deliberately imperial and the effect is genuinely impressive, particularly early on a winter morning when the mist sits on the lawns. Access to the working buildings is limited and the precinct has been under redevelopment, so check current arrangements rather than assuming a walk-up; the axis itself is public and best seen on foot or by bicycle at dawn.

The capital district holds the country's institutional collections, and two are essential. The National Museum, on Janpath, runs from Indus Valley seals and Buddhist sculpture through Mughal miniatures and decorative arts — the single best introduction to the subcontinent's material history, and a useful first stop before travelling anywhere else in India. The National Gallery of Modern Art, near India Gate, covers Indian art from the nineteenth-century Company School to contemporary practice, in a former princely residence with rotating exhibitions worth checking before you go. Slightly further west, in the diplomatic enclave, the National Rail Museum is better than it sounds: an open-air collection of heritage locomotives and royal saloon carriages, including one of the oldest working steam engines in the world, and a genuinely good few hours with children. The memorial museum on Safdarjung Road, in the house of a former prime minister, is the district's other significant institution. All are within the district's own radius and combine easily with the axis in one day.

Lodhi Gardens is the most civilised green space in Delhi and a genuine anomaly: ninety acres of lawns and walking paths in the middle of the capital district, with substantial fifteenth-century royal tombs standing among the bougainvillea. The tombs of Mohammed Shah and Sikandar Lodhi and the Bara Gumbad mosque complex are five-hundred-year-old buildings you can walk up to and touch, with no ticket, no barrier and no crowd — while the city's professional class jogs, does yoga and walks dogs around them every morning. It is the best hour in the district and costs nothing. The surrounding Lodhi Estate is the quietest walking in central Delhi, and the Lodhi Art District nearby has turned a stretch of government housing into a large open-air mural project. Together they make the case that the planned capital is not only ceremonial: it is also where the city goes to breathe.

The district's most affecting hour is not architectural. Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, on Ashoka Road, is Delhi's principal Sikh house of worship — an eighteenth-century white marble complex with a golden dome and a sacred pool, with continuous recitation of scripture in the main hall. What draws visitors of every background is the langar: a community kitchen that feeds an enormous number of people every day, free, regardless of religion, caste or status, sitting on the floor in rows. Visitors are welcome to eat and equally welcome to help — the volunteer kitchens run at industrial scale and the work is simple. Cover your head with a scarf, which is provided at the entrance, leave your shoes at the counter, and wash your hands before entering the hall. It communicates the Sikh principle of equality more directly than any explanation, and it is a five-minute walk from Connaught Place.

Connaught Place is the commercial heart of the planned capital: a white-columned Georgian circus of concentric roads, built as the new city's shopping centre and still the hinge between the old city to the north and the district to the south. Its colonnades hold bookshops, cafés, restaurants and airline offices, with the underground Palika Bazaar beneath the central park for bargain hunting. Khan Market, a few minutes south, is the expensive one — independent bookshops alongside designer boutiques and some of the city's better restaurants, in a small grid of lanes that has become the most costly retail address in the country. For crafts with provenance rather than souvenirs, the state emporia along Baba Kharak Singh Marg sell government-certified regional work at fixed prices: unglamorous shops, genuinely good textiles, and no bargaining. Between them these three cover most of what the capital district sells; the metropolis's wholesale markets and craft bazaars are a different world and are covered in their own guide.

Chanakyapuri, west of the ceremonial axis, is the diplomatic enclave: a low-density district of embassies, high commissions and residences laid out on wide, tree-lined roads, with the missions of most of the world within a few square kilometres. It is also, for a substantial number of visitors, the practical reason to be in Delhi at all — the city is a regional centre for consular business, and the visa-application centres serving several countries operate from commercial buildings in and around the district. If your trip includes an appointment, the planning advice is simple and worth following: treat that day as a low-complexity day. Book transport rather than improvising it, allow considerably more time than the map suggests because the enclave's roads are quiet but its security procedures are not, expect to leave phones and bags outside, and do not stack a major sightseeing plan behind it. Entry rules and eligibility are visa territory, not travel territory — but the geography and the shape of the day are genuinely useful to know in advance.

The capital district is the easiest part of Delhi to stay in if your business is here: it is central, green, well served by the metro, and the airport express line runs into New Delhi station on its northern edge. Aerocity, beside the airport, is the other obvious base for a short or appointment-driven visit and is twenty minutes from the terminals by metro. Within the district, distances are longer than they look — the plan's generosity means a walk between two roundabouts can take fifteen minutes in the sun — so the metro plus a short ride-hail is the sensible combination, and the wider city's transport picture is covered in the metropolis guide. The one local quirk worth planning around is ceremonial: on national days and during state visits, roads through the axis close, sometimes at short notice, and traffic reroutes around the whole precinct. Late January in particular sees the Republic Day parade and its rehearsals close the ceremonial way repeatedly — spectacular if you want it, disruptive if you did not know.