Delhi or Jaisalmer?

Neither city has open water to swim in. Delhi's stretch of the Yamuna is not for bathing, and Jaisalmer's Gadisar Lake is for boating and watching the sunset. In both, a hotel pool is what gets you through the hot months.

The difference is what comes after. From Delhi, a beach means flying on to Goa or Kerala. In Jaisalmer, a pool at one of the heritage hotels or resorts on the edge of town is worth choosing your room for.

Delhi is one of India's great places to eat. You can start with nihari, kebabs and jalebi in the lanes around Jama Masjid, try butter chicken and dal makhani in the city that created them, and move up to Kashmiri or Keralan kitchens and modern Indian tasting menus.

Jaisalmer offers one cuisine, and it is a good one to try: dal baati churma, ker sangri and a vegetarian thali in a simple local eatery, with kachori and lassi in the morning. Beyond that, the choice is thin. Many rooftop restaurants fall back on pizza and pancakes, and there is little serious dining outside the heritage hotels.

Delhi has layer after layer of history: three UNESCO sites in the Red Fort, Humayun's Tomb and the Qutb Minar, plus Jama Masjid, the Lodi tombs, the imperial avenue down to India Gate and the national art collections. It fills many days, though the sights are far apart and need planning.

Jaisalmer has one great sight. Its fort is a citadel of golden sandstone that people still live in, with Jain temples and a royal palace inside, and the carved havelis and Bada Bagh's cenotaphs lie just below. It is beautiful and hangs together well, but you will see it all in two or three days.

Delhi at least gives you a real night out, even if it is spread across the city: rooftop bars at Hauz Khas Village, pubs under Connaught Place's colonnades and bigger clubs out in Gurugram, all reached by taxi and busiest at weekends. Jaisalmer has no bars or clubs to speak of. A beer on a rooftop facing the lit fort, or a campfire show at a dune camp, is the whole evening, and the lanes are empty well before midnight.

Jaisalmer comes out ahead because the desert is right there. You can take an overnight camel trek across scrub and dunes and sleep under a very dark sky, visit the quieter Khuri dunes, or go into the Desert National Park for great Indian bustards and chinkara. There is only the one landscape, though, and no hills, rivers or water sports.

Delhi's outdoors is a matter of gardens and fragments of forest: morning walks in Lodhi Gardens and Sunder Nursery, the Ridge and trails at Sanjay Van. Birders do well at Okhla and Sultanpur in winter, but heat and smog cut down the time you can spend outside.

Delhi is a much better base for day trips. Agra and the Taj Mahal are a little under two hours away by express train, and Fatehpur Sikri, the temple towns of Mathura and Vrindavan and the fort at Neemrana are all within reach.

Jaisalmer is too remote for that. Close by, the Jain temples of Lodurva and the abandoned villages of Kuldhara and Khaba fit well into a dune outing, but Pokaran and Tanot are long drives for what you get. Most people treat the town as a stop on the way through, not a base.

Both cities are hard work with children, but in different ways. Delhi has places made for them, such as the Rail Museum's steam locomotives, the zoo and the water parks in Noida and Gurugram, but smog, traffic and missing pavements wear families down.

Jaisalmer has nothing designed for children, yet it can be the bigger adventure for school-age ones: a fort like a giant sandcastle, camel rides and a night in a desert tent. The catch is the long journey to get there and the heat outside the cool months.

Delhi is easier to get around despite its size, thanks to the metro: air-conditioned, signed in English and stopping near most monuments, with an express line to the airport. Autos and app taxis cover the gaps, but traffic jams and long distances still eat into the day.

Jaisalmer's centre is small enough to walk, from the fort to the havelis and the lake, though the lanes are uneven and shared with motorbikes and cattle. For anything outside town, such as the dunes, Bada Bagh or Kuldhara, there is no public transport, so you need a hired car or a trip arranged by your hotel.

Delhi is a marketplace for the whole country. You can browse textiles from different states at Dilli Haat, buy at fixed prices in the government emporiums, wander Khari Baoli's spice market and Chandni Chowk's fabric shops, and find Indian designers in Khan Market and Shahpur Jat.

Jaisalmer's shopping is all desert crafts: mirror-work quilts, camel leather sandals, puppets and carved yellow sandstone, sold in the fort's lanes. It is pleasant to browse, but quality varies, the stock repeats and the sellers can be pushy.

Both are very cheap for visitors, with inexpensive local meals, rickshaws and guesthouses, and both charge foreigners more at monuments. Where they differ is in what pushes the bill up. In Delhi it is the grand hotels, the smart South Delhi restaurants and imported alcohol. In Jaisalmer it is the restored palace hotels and luxury tented camps, while haggling can bring the price of a camel trek down a long way.

Delhi has a real classical season. In the cooler months the Mandi House auditoriums host Hindustani recitals and Kathak and Bharatanatyam dance, the National School of Drama anchors the theatre scene, and qawwali at the Nizamuddin shrine on Thursday evenings costs nothing.

Jaisalmer's music is folk, and it is very good. Manganiyar and Langa singers with kamaicha fiddles and khartal clappers perform at dune camps and on rooftops most evenings, often in a staged setting. There are no theatres or concert halls, so outside the winter Desert Festival, that is the whole programme.

Delhi gives you more ways to be looked after. The big hotels run spas with Ayurvedic treatments and Indian massage, and South Delhi has its own yoga and Ayurveda centres, but the city outside never lets up, with traffic, crowds and heavy winter air. Quiet here comes in short spells, such as a walk among the Lodi tombs at first light or a while inside Bangla Sahib, and anyone after a real retreat usually moves on to Rishikesh or Kerala.

Jaisalmer has fewer treatments, mostly hotel spas and a handful of plain massage rooms, and its lanes bring their own touts and heat. What it offers instead is distance. Out in the Thar, after the campfire has burnt down, there is a stillness that a city of Delhi's size cannot give you.