Taj Mahal
When visiting India, don’t let fears of tour buses or hordes of visitors get you thinking you can skip the Taj Mahal – you can’t.
Even on a crowded, hot day, this world wonder is still the ‘Crown of Palaces’, a monument
to love whose very walls seem to resound with the emperor Shah Jahan’s adoration of his beloved
Mumtaz Mahal, the ‘Gem of the Palace’. The marble mausoleum of the Taj Mahal is inlaid with calligraphy, precious
and semiprecious stones, and intricate flower designs representing paradise.
Holy Varanasi
Everyone in Varanasi seems to be dying or praying or hustling or cremating someone or swimming or laundering or washing buff aloes in the city’s sewage saturated Ganges. The goddess river will clean away your sins and help you escape from that tedious life-and death cycle – and Varanasi is the place to take a sacred dip. So take a deep breath, put on a big smile for the ever-present touts, go to the holy water and get your karma in order. Remember, you are in India.
Alluring Darjeeling
Up in a tippy-top nook of India’s far northeast is storied Darjeeling. It’s no longer a romantic mountain hideaway, but the allure remains. Undulating hills of bulbous tea trees are pruned by women in bright-coloured dresses; the majestic Himalaya peek through puff y clouds as the sun climbs out from behind the mountains; and little alleys wend their way through mountain mist, past clotheslines and monasteries. Ride the ‘toy train’ and drink it all in – the tea and the town’s legendary enchantment.
Backwaters of Kerala
It’s unusual to find a place as gorgeous as Kerala’s backwaters: 900 km of interconnected rivers, lakes and lagoons lined with tropical flora. And if you do, there likely won’t be a way to experience it that’s as peaceful and intimate as a few days on a teak-and-palm-thatch houseboat. Float along the water – maybe as the sun sets behind the palms, maybe while eating to-die-for Keralan seafood, maybe as you fall asleep under a twinkling sky – and forget about life on land for a while.
Caves of Ajanta
They may have been ascetics, but
the 2nd-century-BC monks who
created the Ajanta caves had
an eye for the dramatic, in India. The 30 rock cut
forest grottoes punctuate the
side of a horseshoe-shaped cliff , and
originally had individual staircases
leading down to the river. The architecture
and towering stupas made
these caves inspiring places in which
to meditate and live, but the real thing came centuries later, in the form of
exquisite carvings and paintings depicting
Buddha’s former lives. Makes
living in a cave look pretty good.
