Delhi

Delhi's site, where the Aravalli ridge meets the Yamuna, has carried a succession of capitals rather than one continuous city. Tradition places the Mahabharata's Indraprastha here, and the earliest firm remains are those of the Tomara and Chauhan Rajput forts at Lal Kot and Qila Rai Pithora in the south. After the defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192, Qutb al-Din Aibak founded the Delhi Sultanate and began the Qutb Minar; his successors built new walled capitals at Siri, Tughlaqabad, Jahanpanah and Firozabad, whose ruins are scattered across the modern city.

The Mughals took Delhi in 1526, though Agra was their chief seat until Shah Jahan built Shahjahanabad in the 1640s, with the Red Fort at its edge and the Jama Masjid at its centre. Nader Shah's invasion of 1739 and repeated Maratha and Afghan campaigns left the empire a shadow, and the last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was deposed and exiled after the rebellion of 1857, during which the British stormed the walled city.

In 1911 the British announced the transfer of the capital from Calcutta, and Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker laid out New Delhi to the south of the old city; it was inaugurated in 1931. Partition in 1947 transformed Delhi again: much of its Muslim population left for Pakistan and hundreds of thousands of Hindu and Sikh refugees arrived from West Punjab, founding whole new colonies and reshaping the city's commerce and cooking. Anti-Sikh violence followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984. Since the 1990s the capital has expanded far beyond its old limits into the satellite cities of the National Capital Region.

Delhi is a city of arrivals, and its culture reflects that. Urdu poetry flourished here under the later Mughals, and the ghazals of Mirza Ghalib, who lived and is buried in the old city, are still recited; Hindustani classical music, Kathak dance and qawwali all have deep roots, the last heard most famously at the Nizamuddin shrine on Thursday evenings. Modern Delhi supports a dense arts scene, with the national academies, repertory theatre, literature festivals and large book fairs.

Punjabi culture dominates much of the city's public life after the refugee influx of 1947 — in food, in wedding customs and in the loud confidence Delhi is known for across India. The Sikh gurdwaras, the Sufi shrines, the Jain temples of the old city, the churches of the colonial quarter and the newer Baháʼí and Swaminarayan complexes give a fair picture of the range of faiths practised here. Festivals run through the year, and the calendar effectively pauses for Holi, Diwali and Eid.

Manners follow national patterns: shoes off at shrines and in homes, the right hand for eating and giving, modest dress at religious sites, and a broad reluctance to say a plain no. Cricket is followed obsessively and played on every scrap of open ground. Delhiites have a reputation elsewhere in India for being brash, status-conscious and quick to talk about property prices and government appointments — a caricature, but one residents enjoy repeating.

The National Capital Territory recorded about 16.8 million residents at the 2011 census and has grown since; the wider metropolitan region, taking in Gurugram, Noida, Faridabad and Ghaziabad, is among the largest urban areas in the world with more than 28 million people. Government is the defining employer, along with services, retail, construction, information technology in the satellite cities and enormous wholesale trade in the old city.

Housing ranges from the bungalows of Lutyens' Delhi and the gated towers of Gurugram through the planned colonies of South and West Delhi to urban villages and unauthorised settlements where services are thin. Long commutes are the norm, and the metro carries millions of passengers a day. Mornings begin early, with walkers in the parks by sunrise; shops open late morning and trade into the evening, and dinner is eaten late.

Two problems shape daily life more than any other. Air pollution peaks between November and February, when cold, still air traps vehicle and industrial emissions along with smoke from crop burning in neighbouring states, closing schools in the worst weeks. Water supply and groundwater depletion are a chronic strain, and the Yamuna within the city is heavily polluted. Summer heatwaves, flooding during the monsoon and pressure on the metro and roads are all part of the same picture of a city growing faster than its infrastructure.

Delhi's cooking is the product of its migrations. From the Mughal kitchens and the old city come slow-cooked meats: nihari, a beef or mutton stew simmered overnight and eaten at breakfast with khameeri roti; korma; seekh and galouti kebabs; and biryani. From Punjab, after 1947, came the tandoor and the dishes now served worldwide as Indian food — tandoori chicken, butter chicken, dal makhani and the breakfast of chole bhature, spiced chickpeas with a large puffed fried bread.

Street food is a discipline of its own. Chaat covers a family of tangy snacks built on fried dough, potato and chickpea with yoghurt, tamarind and mint chutneys: aloo tikki, papri chaat, dahi bhalla and golgappa, the hollow crisp spheres filled with spiced water. The lanes off Chandni Chowk fry stuffed parathas, kachori and jalebi, and sell milk sweets, rabri and, in winter, daulat ki chaat, a frothed milk confection sold only in the cold months.

Kebab rolls, momos brought by Tibetan and north-eastern migrants, and South Indian dosas are all everyday street food here. Drinks run from sweet milky chai to lassi, sugarcane juice, nimbu pani and, in winter, hot carrot kanji. Khan Market, Hauz Khas and the hotel districts hold the more expensive restaurants, several of them serving reworked regional Indian cooking, while Old Delhi keeps to what it has always made.