Destinations
In-depth guides with real prices, honest opinions, and perspectives no foreign travel writer can share.
North India
The Golden Triangle and beyond. Mughal architecture, holy cities, desert forts, Himalayan foothills, and the Golden Temple of Amritsar.
Agra
The Taj Mahal at sunrise, when the first light hits the white marble and the crowds haven't arrived — there is nothing else like it in the world, and the photos don't capture the scale. Stay until the hour before closing and the light turns amber. Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri alone are worth the journey.
From $20/day
Amritsar
The Golden Temple is covered in 750kg of gold and reflected in a sacred pool where Sikhs have bathed for 450 years — it is one of the most beautiful religious sites on earth and admission is free. At sunset, the Wagah Border ceremony with Pakistan is simultaneously absurd and deeply moving.
From $20/day
Delhi
Seven successive capitals in one city — Mughal Red Fort, Lutyens' colonial boulevards, Old Delhi's Chandni Chowk chaos, and Humayun's Tomb which served as the architectural prototype for the Taj Mahal. Delhi doesn't ease you into India. It drops you straight in.
From $25/day
Jaipur
Rajasthan's capital is painted terracotta pink under a maharaja's 1876 decree — Amber Fort's elephant ramp and mirror palace, Hawa Mahal's 953 latticed windows built for royal women to watch street processions, and bazaars where gemstone cutters and block-print textile shops have operated for centuries.
From $20/day
Jaisalmer
A living medieval fort city in the Thar Desert where 3,000 people still inhabit 12th-century sandstone walls — the entire city is carved from golden-yellow Jaisalmer stone that glows amber at sunset. Sleep inside the fort, wake to camel bells, and spend a night under Rajasthan's desert stars on a dune safari.
From $18/day
Jodhpur
A sea of indigo-painted houses cascading beneath Mehrangarh Fort's walls — one of India's most imposing fortresses, rising 125 metres above the old city on a sheer rock outcropping. The blue was originally a Brahmin caste marker; now the whole old city is painted it. The clock tower's spice market at dusk is essential.
From $18/day
Ladakh
A high-altitude cold desert at 3,500 metres between the Himalayas and the Karakoram — turquoise Pangong Lake stretches 134km to Tibet, Nubra Valley's sand dunes sit between 7,000-metre peaks, and monasteries cling to cliff faces above tiny whitewashed villages. The roads are among the world's highest and the landscape is from another planet.
From $30/day
Rishikesh
Where the Ganges runs emerald-green out of the Himalayas and the Beatles spent 1968 at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram writing most of the White Album. The Laxman Jhula suspension bridge, white-water rafting, 200-hour yoga teacher trainings, and an evening Ganga Aarti ceremony that stops time.
From $15/day
Udaipur
The City of Lakes where white marble palaces float on Lake Pichola — the Lake Palace Hotel looks like it emerged from the water, the City Palace complex is the largest in Rajasthan, and sunset from the hilltop Monsoon Palace turns the entire lake gold. The most romantic city in India.
From $20/day
Varanasi
The oldest continuously inhabited city on earth — at dawn, a boat on the Ganges watching 80 ghats come to life simultaneously, with pilgrims bathing, priests performing puja, and smoke rising from the burning ghat where cremations run 24 hours. Varanasi is the most intense travel experience in India. There is nothing else like it.
From $15/day
West India
India's financial capital meets its beach paradise. Bollywood glamour, laid-back coastal vibes, and Portuguese heritage in Goa.
Goa
450 years of Portuguese colonialism left Goa with Baroque churches, a Catholic-Hindu culture fusion, and a beach culture unlike anywhere else in India. North Goa parties; South Goa is quiet coves and cashew feni. Old Goa's UNESCO basilica holds the preserved body of St. Francis Xavier — on display once a decade.
From $20/day
Mumbai
India's maximum city where Dharavi slum operations and Bollywood sets and art deco Marine Drive exist within 5km of each other. Vada pav from a cart at Dadar station costs ₹15 and is genuinely one of the world's great street foods. The city runs on a ferocious collective energy that is impossible not to feel.
From $30/day
South India
Backwaters, ancient ruins, and tech-city culture. Kerala, Hampi, Mysore, Coorg, and the Andaman Islands — a completely different India from the north.
Andaman Islands
India's most spectacular beaches on an island chain that still feels genuinely remote — Radhanagar Beach on Havelock was named Asia's best beach by Time Magazine, the coral reefs around Neil Island are extraordinary for snorkelling, and the bioluminescent plankton at night turns the water into liquid light. The Cellular Jail of colonial-era exile is required history.
From $30/day
Bangalore
India's Silicon Valley with a 900-year brewing tradition — Bangalore's craft beer scene is the best in India, Lalbagh Botanical Garden predates the city's tech campus, and the restaurant culture reflects a young, international, well-travelled population. The most immediately livable city in India for foreign visitors.
From $25/day
Chennai
South India's cultural capital where classical Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam dance are living traditions performed weekly in concert halls. Marina Beach is the second-longest urban beach in the world and the best place to watch Chennai's morning unfold. The temple gopurams (towers) of Mylapore are the most ornate in India.
From $22/day
Coorg
The Scotland of India — rolling coffee and cardamom hills at 1,500 metres in the Western Ghats, where a warrior clan culture distinct from the rest of Karnataka has existed for centuries. Stay on a working coffee estate, hike to Abbey Falls, and drink filter coffee picked from bushes outside your window.
From $25/day
Hampi
The ruins of Vijayanagara — once the world's second-largest city — scattered across a landscape of giant orange boulders that look like they were arranged by a god. Virupaksha Temple is still active after 7 centuries. Rent a bicycle, get lost between monuments, and watch the sun set from a boulder with no one else in sight.
From $15/day
Kerala
Sleep on a houseboat drifting through Alleppey's backwater canals under a canopy of coconut palms — the silence is extraordinary. Munnar's tea estates turn the hillsides emerald, Kochi's Fort area holds Chinese fishing nets from the 1400s, and the coastal seafood eaten on banana leaves is one of India's great cuisines.
From $25/day
Mysore
The Mysore Palace is one of India's most ornate royal buildings — 145 rooms of Indo-Saracenic architecture that lights up with 97,000 bulbs on Sunday evenings and festival days. The city is also the birthplace of Ashtanga yoga and the source of India's finest silk and sandalwood products.
From $18/day
East India
Colonial Kolkata, Darjeeling's tea hills and toy train, and the spiritual confluence of the Ganges plain. The India that moves at its own pace.
Darjeeling
The world's most famous tea growing at 2,042 metres — first-flush Darjeeling from estates like Makaibari and Margaret's Hope has a muscatel character that can't be replicated elsewhere. The Toy Train is a UNESCO World Heritage narrow-gauge railway, and on clear mornings Kanchenjunga's 8,586-metre peak appears impossibly close.
From $18/day
Kolkata
The city that was once the British Empire's second capital — Victoria Memorial's white marble, the Howrah Bridge's 100,000 daily pedestrians, and the Kumartuli potters' quarter where clay goddesses are made by hand for Durga Puja. Kolkata's intellectual and artistic life is unlike anywhere else in India.
From $20/day
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