Chennai or Delhi?

Chennai at least has a coast. Marina Beach and Elliot's Beach are good for sea breezes, snacks and a sunset stroll, though heavy surf and currents keep people near the shore, and safer swimming means driving down the East Coast Road towards Kovalam.

Delhi lies far inland with only the Yamuna, so water means a hotel pool, and sand and sea mean a separate flight to Goa or Kerala.

Both are superb places to eat cheaply, but in different directions. Delhi has the wider table: parathas, nihari and kebabs in the lanes of Old Delhi, chaat at street carts, Punjabi classics that were born in the city, and a serious tier of regional and modern Indian restaurants in South Delhi.

Chennai is narrower and deeper, with tiffin halls, banana-leaf meals in Mylapore and T. Nagar, Chettinad heat and filter coffee. It is the right city if South Indian cooking is the point, with less choice beyond it and little drinking culture.

Delhi has the heavier list of monuments by a distance: the Red Fort, Humayun's Tomb and the Qutb Minar as UNESCO sites, plus Jama Masjid, the Lodi tombs and the imperial axis of New Delhi. Centuries of successive capitals fill several days of sightseeing.

Chennai is a smaller, more focused visit: the Kapaleeshwarar and Parthasarathy temples as living places of worship, Chola bronzes in Egmore, and the red Indo-Saracenic buildings of old Madras around Fort St George. Both cities scatter their sights, so neither suits strolling from one to the next.

Neither is a nightlife city, but Delhi offers a real evening out: rooftop bars at Hauz Khas Village, the pubs under the Connaught Place colonnades and bigger clubs and brewpubs in Gurugram, liveliest at weekends. Chennai's tight drinking rules leave a handful of hotel bars and licensed pubs that close early, so its evenings belong to the beach and late dinners.

Chennai's wetlands give it the edge: herons and waders on the Pallikaranai marsh and the Adyar estuary, blackbuck in Guindy, and in winter, pelicans and flamingos at Pulicat and Vedanthangal. The coast adds surf lessons at Kovalam and turtle walks on winter nights, though the land is flat and the humidity keeps any activity to early mornings.

Delhi's green spaces are mostly gardens and the scrubby Ridge forest, with good winter birding at Okhla and Sultanpur. From late autumn, smog often makes exercise outdoors unwise, and real hiking means a longer trip north to the Himalayan hill stations.

Agra settles this one. The Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, under two hours away by express train, give Delhi a day out few cities can match, with Fatehpur Sikri and the Krishna towns of Mathura and Vrindavan as further options.

Chennai has two excellent trips of its own, the Pallava carvings at Mahabalipuram and the temple city of Kanchipuram, which pairs naturally with silk shopping. Beyond those, the choices stretch into long days to Pondicherry or Vellore.

Children are made welcome in both, and both are hard work with them. Chennai's best bets are the large green zoo at Vandalur and evenings on Elliot's Beach with pony rides, while Delhi has the steam locomotives of the National Rail Museum and water parks on its edges.

What wears families down differs. In Chennai it is constant heat and long car journeys; in Delhi it is summer heat, winter smog and a real risk of stomach bugs.

Delhi's metro makes the difference: a large network with English signs, an airport express and stations near most major monuments, with cycle-rickshaws for the narrowest lanes of Old Delhi.

Chennai's metro is clean but reaches fewer of the places visitors want, so most journeys come down to autos and app cabs in heavy traffic. In both cities, distances and poor pavements rule out walking between sights.

Delhi gathers crafts from all over India: Dilli Haat, the state emporiums on Baba Kharak Singh Marg, Old Delhi's spice and fabric bazaars, Indian designers in Khan Market and Shahpur Jat, and bargain streets like Janpath.

Chennai is the specialist, with silk and gold in the crush of T. Nagar, Kanchipuram weaves, and brass lamps and temple jewellery around the Mylapore tank. For a wedding sari it is hard to beat; for range and contemporary design, Delhi leads.

Both are very cheap, with meals, autos and metro rides costing little in either. The difference lies in where the money goes.

In Chennai the jump comes with business hotels aimed at corporate travellers. Delhi has plenty of comfortable mid-range rooms, but foreigners pay more at the big monuments, and its grand hotels and South Delhi restaurants can run up a bill quickly.

Chennai is the home of Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam, and in the Margazhi season, from December into January, its sabhas and the Music Academy run concerts from morning to night, many morning ones free. Kalakshetra keeps classical dance going through the rest of the year.

Delhi's stage life is broader but less concentrated: Hindustani recitals and Kathak around Mandi House, Hindi theatre from the National School of Drama, and Sufi qawwali at the Nizamuddin shrine on Thursday evenings.

Chennai has the deeper yoga heritage, with studios in Mylapore and Adyar teaching in the lineage of modern hatha yoga. It also has inexpensive Kerala-style massage, the shaded grounds of the Theosophical Society and quiet spa resorts down the East Coast Road.

Delhi's calm comes from hotel spas offering Ayurvedic treatments, early mornings in Lodhi Gardens or Sunder Nursery and the hush inside a gurudwara or Sufi shrine. Both cities are noisy and hard to slow down in, so in the north a proper retreat usually means moving on to Rishikesh.