India Attractions

Darjeeling

Darjeeling has been a favourite hill station of the British since they established it as an R 'n' R centre for their troops in the mid-1800s. The town offers visits to Buddhist monasteries, tours to tea plantations, shopping in bustling bazaars and trekking in high-altitude spots to the north.

Darjeeling straddles a 2100m (6890ft)-high ridge in the far north of West Bengal. So, like many places in the Himalaya, half the fun is in getting there. A miniature train, which loops its way from the plains up to Darjeeling in a 10-hour grind of soot and smoke, is a treat to ride.

Jaipur

The capital of Rajasthan is popularly known as the 'pink city' because of the ochre-pink hue of its old buildings and crenellated city walls. The Rajputs associated the colour pink with hospitality, and reputedly daubed the city in preparation for the visit of Britain's Prince Alfred in 1853.

Jaipur is a city of broad avenues and architectural harmony, built on a dry lake bed surrounded by barren hills. It's an extremely colourful city that radiates a magical warm glow in the evening light. The most obvious landmark in the old city is the Iswari Minar Swarga Sul, which overlooks the city.

Delhi

Don't let your first impressions of Delhi stick like a sacred cow in a traffic jam: get behind the madcap façade and discover the inner peace of a city rich with culture, architecture and human diversity, deep with history and totally addictive to epicureans.

Both Old and New Delhi exert a beguiling charm on visitors. Lose yourself unwinding the secrets of the city's Mughal past in the labyrinthine streets of Old Delhi before emerging into the wide open spaces of imperial New Delhi, with its ordered governmental vistas and generous leafy avenues.

Mumbai

Mumbai is the bubblegum glamour of Bollywood cinema, shopping malls full of designer labels, cricket on the Oval Maidan, promenading families eating bhelpuri on the beach at Chowpatty, red double-decker buses queuing in grinding traffic jams and the infamous cages of the red-light district.

This pungent drama is played out against a Victorian townscape more reminiscent of a prosperous 19th-century English industrial city than anything you'd expect to find on the edge of the Arabian Sea. It's a city with vibrant streetlife, India's best nightlife, and a wealth of bazaars.

Agra

The Taj Mahal has become the de facto tourist emblem of India. This poignant Mughal mausoleum was constructed by Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his second wife Mumtaz Mahal, whose death in childbirth in 1631 left the emperor so heartbroken that his hair is said to have turned grey overnight.

The city's other major attraction is the massive red sandstone Agra Fort, also on the bank of the Yamuna River. Stunning walls, a maze of superb halls, mosques, chambers and gardens form a small city within a city. Unfortunately, some of these buildings are closed to visitors.

Kolkata

Simultaneously noble and squalid, cultured and desperate, Kolkata is a daily festival of human existence. And it's all played out before your very eyes on teeming streets where not an inch of space is wasted. By its old spelling, Calcutta, India's second-biggest city conjures up images of human suffering to most Westerners. But Bengalis have long been infuriated by one-sided depictions of their vibrant capital. Kolkata is locally regarded as the intellectual and cultural capital of the nation. Several of India's great 19th- and 20th-century heroes were Kolkatans, including guru-philosopher Ramakrishna, Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore and celebrated film director Satyajit Ray. Dozens of venues showcase Bengali dance, poetry, art, music, film and theatre. And while poverty certainly remains in-your-face, the dapper Bengali gentry continue to frequent grand old gentlemen's clubs, back horses at the Calcutta Racetrack and play soothing rounds of golf at some of India's finest courses.

As the former capital of British India, Kolkata retains a feast of dramatic colonial architecture, with more than a few fine buildings in photogenic states of semi-collapse. The city still has many slums but is also developing dynamic new-town suburbs, a rash of air-conditioned shopping malls and some of the best restaurants in India. This is a fabulous place to sample the mild, fruity tang of Bengali cuisine and share the city's passion for sweets.

Goa

It's a shame Goa comes burdened with a reputation for louche living, because there's so much more to it than sun, sand and psychedelia. The allure of Goa is that it remains quite distinct from the rest of India and is small enough to be grasped and explored in a way that other Indian states are not.

Goa has enjoyed a prominent place in the travellers' lexicon since the heady days of the 1960s, but the (in)famous hippies have now been replaced by backpackers, Indian visitors and package tourists on two-week jaunts from Europe. The locals are relaxed and friendly, and skirts outnumber saris.