Where most first journeys begin, and where we still do our slowest work
The North
The North is Rajasthan in the cool months — late October through early March — and the lower Himalayas the rest of the year. Delhi anchors the arrival, Uttarakhand and Himachal offer the summer reprieve, and Punjab remains the region we send people to for langar at the Golden Temple and the quieter Doaba villages no one writes about. We avoid Rajasthan in May. We send clients to Kumaon instead.
Photo: Timothy A · CC BY-SA 4.0
Destinations · 20
Uttar Pradesh
Agra
The Taj at first light from the far bank, an emperor's prison cell with the best view in India, and a Mughal capital most people leave in four hours.
Punjab
Amritsar
The Harmandir Sahib at 4am, the world's largest free kitchen feeding 100,000 a day, and a partition museum that explains the rest of the city.
Uttarakhand
Auli & Garhwal
The Garhwal high country — Auli, Joshimath, the Valley of Flowers — for travellers who want meadows and serious mountains in one trip.
Uttar Pradesh
Banaras
The river, the lanes, and a city that has never paused.
Rajasthan
Bundi
A blue-painted hill town with a 14th-century palace nobody renovated, stepwells in residential lanes, and Kipling's old guesthouse still standing.
Delhi
Delhi
Eight cities stacked on one plain. We give you the two nobody schedules — Mehrauli at dawn and Nizamuddin on a Thursday night.
Himachal Pradesh
Dharamshala & McLeodganj
The Dalai Lama's town and the Dhauladhar foothills — for travellers who want a Tibetan Buddhist circuit without the Ladakh winter.
Rajasthan
Jaipur
The pink city, but seen through the families that built it.
Rajasthan
Jaisalmer
One of the world's last inhabited fortresses — roughly 3,000 people still live inside the walls — plus the merchant havelis and the dunes past Khuri.
Rajasthan
Jodhpur
The blue city, stepwells, and Mehrangarh against a desert sky.
Himachal Pradesh
Manali
Head of the Kullu valley — cedar temples and hot springs in old Manali, and the road over Rohtang into Lahaul and Spiti.
Uttarakhand
Munsiyari & Kumaon
Kumaon's quieter side — Munsiyari, Binsar, the villages where Corbett wrote — for travellers who want forests and the Panchachuli range.
Uttarakhand
Nainital
A lake in a crater of oak and rhododendron, Kumaon's colonial hill capital, and Corbett and the Binsar forests within a short drive.
Rajasthan
Pushkar
A small lake town held together by a Brahma temple, fifty-two ghats, and a camel fair the rest of India has mostly forgotten how to read.
Rajasthan
Ranthambhore
Tigers against ruins. Crowded, and worth it for the right four days in March or April.
Uttarakhand
Rishikesh
Where the Ganga leaves the mountains — evening aarti on the ghats, white water above town, and the trailhead for the Char Dham.
Himachal Pradesh
Shimla
The Raj's summer capital, reached on a UNESCO-listed narrow-gauge line through 102 tunnels, with deodar ridge walks starting behind the Mall.
Jammu & Kashmir
Srinagar
Mughal gardens terraced into the Zabarwan, a lake city worked from shikaras before dawn, and the Sind and Lidder valleys an hour out.
Rajasthan
Udaipur
A lake city that photographs too easily. Go up into the Aravallis behind it, and out to the stepwells and miniature-painting workshops.
Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand
High meadows, the Valley of Flowers, char dham in low season.
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