A short drive will take you to your pedicab, and then you're off, squeaking through the streets surrounding Chandni Chowk, a once-grand avenue laid out in 1650 by Shah Jahan's daughter (urban planning ran in the family). Today, it is the teeming home of many of the city's wholesale shops (illustrated: below right), a web of bazaars selling everything from silver to spices, tea to turbans. Your neck will ache from swiveling as your rickshaw driver pedals you—with surprising speed and dexterity—through the neighborhood. Here are men heaving great dumplings of burlap that, once placed on the curb and slit, spill thousands of crumpled saffron-colored marigolds. There are the gutters, filled with gray water and skinny dogs, and dozens of brilliant beet-pink rose petals. Your driver will take you into one of the alleyways, which might be dedicated to weddings, stall after cramped stall glittering with paste jewelry, gold-foil armbands, and red-glass bindis; or to shawls, arranged floor to ceiling in stripes of scarlet, lilac, lime, and daffodil; or to books, stacked so densely bricklike that they seem to provide the very infrastructure of the shop that sells them.

Your driver (tip him a couple of dollars) will drop you off at the foot of the last of Shah Jahan's accomplishments you'll see today. Jama Masjid, finished in 1656, is India's largest mosque, a vast, open-air structure with a courtyard, mapped with lines demarcating spaces for 20,000 faithful, which gives it the look of a giant and mysterious chessboard. Over a late lunch of chicken biryani at the delicious and unpretentious HaveMore (11-12 Pandara Road Market; 91-11-2338-7070; entrées, $6–$8), you'll find yourself marveling at Shah Jahan's ingenuity and visual sophistication—if only all nation builders were so aesthetically minded! You'll be back at your hotel by three o'clock, with the afternoon free. You have an early day tomorrow, so an early dinner is in order. Delhi has a number of terrific options, and since the next few days will take you to smaller cities, where the range of cuisines is more limited, try someplace like the Smoke House Grill (North Wing, VIPPS Center, Plot No. 2, LSC Masjid Moth; 91-11-414-35530; entrées, $8–$21), a newish haunt of Delhi's moneyed and beautiful. A $6 taxi ride takes you to this moodily lit hot spot, where the Anglo-Indian fusion food is upstaged only by the patrons—Sikh trust-funders in Diesel jeans and crisp turbans; girls wearing Cavalli with their bindis. Those not as interested in gawking at Paris Hilton's Subcontinental counterparts should try The Imperial's acclaimed Spice Route (91-11-4111-6605; entrées, $13–$36).

Day 3: Delhi to Varanasi
Here, as throughout your trip, a rep from IVAT's local office will meet you in the lobby just before 9 a.m. to take you to the airport for your hour-long 10:40 flight to Varanasi. You'll never be happier for an escort: Indian airports are notoriously chaotic, operating on their own obscure internal logic.