The first visit to India is an eyeful. Baskets of ocher-colored spices, outstretched hands, a rainbow of shawls, and relentless dichotomies - new/old, rich/poor, ugly/beautiful - pour into the lens of a hungry camera. It is during my first sightseeing tour of Delhi that these preconceived fantasies of what India would be collide with a reality that zooms toward me in the form of a sign on the bumper of a truck.

"Horn please," it reads.

Our driver plunges a foot to the brake pedal, his vehicle skidding gently in the dusty road, coming within inches of the truck's bumper. Then he leans into the horn. Two men digging up bricks 15 feet away barely muster a glance. I exhale.

"There are three things you must have to drive in India," my guide, Ashoka, says, matter-of-factly. "Good brakes, good horn, good luck. If you don't have all three, you can't drive here."

The visitor to India would be wise to skip straight to a fourth item: a driver. There is no place on earth - not even Boston - where I'd rather drive less. This isn't just a matter of safety (or sanity); there's so much to glimpse along the sides of the roads that you'd miss most of it sitting behind the wheel. It's also worth investing in a good guide - easily arranged through the better hotels - because India's capital, New Delhi, is a sweltering metropolis of more than 12 million, a city that resists orderly exploration, especially for a Westerner unfamiliar with Muslim and Hindu history and tenets.

"It's hard to get people to visit the first time," Ashoka concurs. "But it's easy to get them to come back."

Delhi is an excellent place to get a handle on India, a country that celebrates its past as it feasts on the future. Streets wide and narrow are still navigated by sacred cows lumbering beneath slick billboards that announce the opening of the latest Bollywood epic. The sobering din of crushing traffic is mitigated by a stroll through the peaceful Lodi Gardens. The impersonal modern buildings of "New" Delhi are escaped with a left turn into the intoxicating shanty lanes of Chandni Chowk.

Where to begin? Start with the name: Today's New Delhi is at least the eighth city to inhabit this dusty plain on the banks of the Yamuna River. It was first known as Indraprastha, founded in 1450 BC by the Pandava dynasty (the family immortalized in the epic tale Mahabharata). Successive rulers left their mark, capped in 1911 when Britain's King George V proclaimed that the Imperial Capital of India would be shifted from Calcutta to this spot, to be named New Delhi.

Architect Edwin Lutyens was hired to remake the city - into the "Rome of Hindustan," he proclaimed. Thirteen years of building were inaugurated in 1931, most visible in the city's broad majestic streets, the Presidential Palace, and the India Gate, a memorial to the more than 85,000 Indian soldiers who died in service to Britain during World War I.

But I didn't come to India to revel in the twentieth-century architecture of colonialists, so my hotel arranges for a guide and a driver. Early one morning, we head south past the India Gate to the city's southern suburbs, to the Qutub Minar, a striking minaret that has become Delhi's iconic symbol. Completed in 1198 to mark the arrival of Islam, the 238-foot-high fluted sandstone tower rises next to the ruins of India's first mosque, the Quwwatu'l-Islam - or the "might of Islam." But there are some charming architectural inconsistencies.

"You see the columns?" Ashoka asks, pointing to a series of intricately carved pillars. "This is what I call twelfth-century recycling - you can see it's not typical of Muslim design." The resourceful builders of Qutub Minar took pieces from 27 Hindu and Jain temples that formerly occupied this site and reincarnated them into the mosque structures. Even my untrained eye can discern the difference between stone adorned with Hindu motifs and the doorways and arches that display elaborate inscriptions from the Koran.

Despite the religious contradictions, Qutub Minar established the character for India's Islamic architecture for centuries to come, and the parklike setting is agreeable, with vivid green parrots flapping through the archways.

Ashoka instructs our driver to head back to New Delhi, and Humayun's Tomb, which is reached through layers of serene gardens and fountains that have been lovingly renovated in recent years. The hubbub of the city suddenly seems far away. I don't put my finger on it immediately, but the graceful burial place reminds me of another famous building.

"It should," smiles Ashoka. "Humayun's Tomb was the inspiration for the Taj Mahal. The two served as the beginning and the end of Mughal architecture." Built in 1570 for the second Mughal emperor by his widow, Humayun's Tomb incorporates Hindu design, along with deep-vaulted recesses that allow the midday light through doorways to bounce from the floor, illuminating the somber chambers.

It was here that the Mughals first attempted the monumental scale that would define future imperial building. "There are four qualities found in Mughal architecture," Ashoka says. "The perfect symmetry, the high double-onion domes, inlay work, and char bagh, the formal gardens and fountains that depict the Koran's description of paradise." I am primed for a visit to the Taj Mahal, where these elements are said to have been perfectly harmonized about a century later, but first there are a few other stops in Old Delhi necessary to follow through on the historical chronology.

it's always rush hour in Delhi, so the traffic inches along frustratingly, but eventually we arrive at the Red Fort, the imperial residence of Shah Jahan, the emperor who founded the seventh Delhi. Completed in 1648 and surrounded by thick red sandstone walls, more than a mile and a half in circumference, the fort has seen its riches plundered through the years. A bejeweled "peacock throne" now resides in Tehran; the British pulled up the gardens and added barracks. It feels more stubbornly militaristic rather than like the opulent seat of Mughal power that it once was, but there are still examples of Shah Jahan's wealth. I find beautiful craft work and lush carvings, especially once inside the Diwan-i Aam, the hall of public audiences, infused with pietra dura, fine inlay work imported from Italy.

Outside the fort's Lahore Gate, Ashoka negotiates for a bicycle rickshaw driver to take us down Chandni Chowk and the crowded narrow alleys of Old Delhi. We could hire an auto rickshaw - ­motor powered and suitable for covering much of the area - but the old city is best navigated in a human-powered cycle rickshaw. We've barely sat in our seats before the driver plunges his leg to a pedal, and we're off.

Ashoka gamely attempts to narrate the tour, but I am so distracted by the cacophonous energy that I hardly pay attention. On the left is the marble courtyard of Delhi's oldest temple for followers of Jainism; on the right a heated argument is being conducted on the street amid swirls of clove-cigarette smoke. Ashoka motions toward the Sikh temple, Gurudwara Sisganj, cloaked behind flower sellers, but before he can explain the difference between Jains and Sikhs, we're heading down a tiny lane - too small for any car - zooming past tiny storefronts stocked with hordes of wedding goods, silver and gold antiques, garlands of flowers, and even a store selling firework supplies.

Now and again, our cyclist is forced to a halt - a traffic jam composed of rickshaws, sack-laden laborers demanding right-of-way, and, yes, an unyielding cow wandering aimlessly. We're stuck for a minute in front of a ramshackle food stall, and the fragrance of simmering spices adds another dimension to this sensory excursion, one that takes it beyond your average amusement park e-ticket ride.

The mayhem is astonishing, and when we pass Khari Baoli, one of the largest spice markets in India, I ask for a breather. Here, bags brim with ground turmeric, ginger, tamarind, chilies, cinnamon bark, nuts, and dried fruit, the merchants imploring me to sample the treats, with no obligation.

And then it's back down the convoluted lanes. Ashoka explains how much of Old Delhi is still enclosed by degenerating city walls, and in many ways remains separate from the rest of Delhi, its sizable Muslim population rarely heading beyond the walls. It is a place of not-infrequent unrest - we are advised to avoid Fridays, when the faithful clog the streets with trips to the mosques - but it is an intoxicating immersion into old India, an essential Delhi experience.

We exit the labyrinth at the foot of stairs leading to Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque and the last building of Shah Jahan's reign, finished in 1658. I look toward the outdoor courtyard, but first I must remove my shoes and cover my legs with a sarong (women are also expected to cover their shoulders and head with a scarf).

The courtyard is large enough to accommodate 25,000 people, and an immense vaulted recess faces the direction of Mecca. It's not prayer time, but the courtyard strikes me as a stage of sorts, with men carefully studying newspapers next to the central fountains - used for ritual ablutions before prayer - and families touring the site, usually with a mother-in-law in tow, her neck ringed with a brilliant sari. A man swings a giant mop from a rope, perhaps to keep pigeons away, perhaps to sweep the birdseed in their direction.

Minarets rise from the corners of the courtyard. We climb the southern one for a breathtaking view of Delhi through the smog and fading light of day.

No one makes a trip to Delhi without a side trip to Agra for visits to two vital monuments. The Taj Mahal I knew of, of course, and I approached a visit with the enthusiasm of a dowager looking to cross a monument off a life list. But the second site, Fatehpur Sikri, was new to me.

At the bustling New Delhi train station, Ashoka leads me past porters in red uniforms carting luggage piled high atop turbans, to board the six a.m. Shatabdi Express. The train speeds to Agra in two hours and 15 minutes, depositing us into the station, where a driver waits to collect us.

Our morning visit to Fatehpur Sikri, located about 25 miles west of Agra, proves revelatory. In 1571, Emperor Akbar decided to transfer the capital of the Mughal Empire from Agra to this spot, building elegant palaces from white marble and red sandstone. But he abandoned Fatehpur Sikri after just 15 years of habitation, due to lack of water. The result is a ghost town so beautifully preserved it's as if, just prior to our arrival, it had been deposited by helicopter.

Fatehpur Sikri is divided into two sections, residential and religious, and ramparts enclose three sides while the fourth faces the dry lake bed that proved to be the city's doom. The palaces, mosques, and tombs are finely carved and lack the wear and tear of some monuments. Of note: Diwan-i Khas, a small private audience hall dominated by a remarkable carved column that leads up to a balcony with four bridges extending out to an upper gallery. This one-of-a-kind building alone could have been justification for Fatehpur Sikri's inclusion on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites.

Following a gentle surprise like Fatehpur Sikri, could the Taj Mahal, the world's most beautiful monument, be anything but anticlimactic?

Well, it helps to have a poignant story line, one famously called "a teardrop on the cheek of time" by poet Rabindranath Tagore. The Emperor Shah Jahan conceived the Taj Mahal as the ultimate monument to love for his deceased wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who had died during childbirth. Twenty thousand laborers constructed the buildings over a period of 17 years. After its completion, the emperor's son Aurangzeb deposed Shah Jahan and imprisoned him in Agra Fort (also worth a visit), leaving the overthrown emperor to spend the rest of his years gazing past the river at his wife's tomb.

We arrive at the Taj Mahal in late afternoon, and there is the expected clamor of bodies and outstretched palms, but after security checks, we pass through the main gates and immediately encounter the trademark view of the exquisitely symmetrical arrangement. Visitors angle patiently to take photos of loved ones against the backdrop.

A plaintive water channel lined with cypress trees focuses my eyes on the monument, the pool reflecting the domes and minarets with a shimmer. There are scads of people making the trek through the gardens, and yet somehow they don't detract from the scene - everyone seems so happy to be here. As I make my slow approach to the mausoleum, the light begins to soften, the pearlescent buildings still gleam against the graying sky. Closer still, the detail of carving and exacting inlay work begin to appear - ebony, coral, carnelian, and semiprecious stones, with 43 different gems alone adorning Mumtaz's tomb.

By the time I reach her tomb, I realize the Taj Mahal is beyond words, ultimately stunning me to reverence. The notion that I arrived with - that it might be some mere tourist pit stop - becomes absurd.

The transcendence of the Taj Mahal lies in the sum of its parts: a sweetly sad tale, an architectural masterpiece, and the theater of its visitors interacting with the monument.

Something like India itself.





When to go:
October through November, when the summer monsoon rains have let up, is ideal - the landscapes are green, but the crowds haven't arrived. The weather is good in December and January, but this is prime honeymoon season and you'll need to reserve well in advance for good hotels. Most museums are closed on Mondays.

Booking a trip:

First-time visitors will appreciate the services of a tour operator. There are a number of high-end tour operators. Geographic Expeditions (800-777-8183, www.geoex.com) does varied trips that appeal to adventurous spirits, while Travcoa (866-591-0070, www.travcoa.com) delivers luxury to the demanding traveler. Moderately priced group trips are handled by SITA World Travel (800-421-5643, www.sitaworldtravel
.com). Pallavi Shah of Our Personal Guest (212-319-1354, www.ourpersonalguest.com) offers bespoke, individualized tours to India.

Where to stay:

Opened in 1931, the Imperial Hotel (011-91-11-2334-1234, www.theimperialindia.com) marks the arrival of New Delhi while capturing the elegance of the colonial-era city. Located near Lodi Gardens, the Oberoi (011-91-11-2389-0505, oberoihotels.com) is surrounded by golf courses and is a favored haunt of celebrities. Run by the country's largest hotel chain, the Taj Mahal Hotel (011-91-11-2302-6162, www
.tajhotels.com) is a relatively modern facility that's steeped in ethnic decor. With several price categories, the 501-room ITC Hotel Maurya Sheraton (011-91-11-2611-2233, www.sheraton.com) caters to a wide range of travelers and is convenient to the airport and to the city's diplomatic enclave.

For more information, call (800) 953-9399
(U.S. office for India Tourism) or go to www.incredibleindia.org.