India

Alleppey

The Kerala backwaters at their most complete, and the one place where sleeping on the water is the point rather than a gimmick.

✓ best Dec-Mar

Amritsar

The spiritual heart of the Sikh world: the Golden Temple in its marble tank, a free kitchen feeding tens of thousands a day, and the Pakistan border 30 km away.

✓ best Feb-Mar

Andaman Islands

The best diving in India and its emptiest beaches, on islands that were a prison colony long before they were a holiday.

✓ best Jan-Apr

Chennai

The capital of Tamil culture and the oldest of Britain's Indian cities: temple streets, Chola bronzes and the best vegetarian breakfast in the country.

✓ best Jan-Mar

Darjeeling

The old summer capital of British Bengal, on a ridge that looks straight at Kanchenjunga, with the tea that carries its name growing on the slope below.

✓ best Mar-Apr, Oct-Dec

Delhi

Eight centuries of capitals stacked on one plain, with the subcontinent's deepest run of monuments and its best street eating.

Gangtok

The tidy Himalayan capital of a former Buddhist kingdom - monastic seats, a wall of Kanchenjunga on clear mornings, and the desk where the rest of Sikkim gets arranged.

✓ best Feb-Mar, Nov-Dec

Goa

The one corner of India where four and a half centuries of Portugal, a legendary party coast and genuinely empty beaches all sit within an hour of each other.

Jaipur

A planned Rajput capital from 1727, painted pink and still trading out of the same grid of bazaars, under three hill forts strung along the ridge above it.

Jaisalmer

One of the last forts on earth people never moved out of, golden sandstone in the middle of the Thar, with carved merchant mansions below and dunes an hour away.

Kochi

Two thousand years of the spice trade parked around one harbour, with a Portuguese church, a Dutch palace, a synagogue and Chinese fishing nets all inside a single walk.

✓ best Dec-Jan

Kolkata

The old capital of British India, turned the subcontinent's most bookish and argumentative city - and the one that stages Durga Puja, its greatest street festival.

The gateway to a Buddhist kingdom on the Tibetan plateau's western edge, where a caravan town at 3,500 m opens onto cliff-top monasteries, 5,000 m passes and lakes on the Chinese border - provided you give your body the first day and a half it demands.

✓ best Apr-Oct

Madurai

The Tamil temple city at full strength: the Meenakshi Amman Temple, with an entire city arranged in rings around it.

✓ best Dec-Feb

Mumbai

India's money, its movies and its migrants packed onto a reclaimed peninsula - the country's fastest, most sea-facing and most openly welcoming city.

✓ best Oct, Dec-May

Rishikesh

The world's yoga capital and India's whitewater capital are the same small town on the same stretch of the Ganges.

✓ best Mar-May, Sep-Nov

Shillong

The base for Meghalaya's escarpment country - living root bridges, the wettest rain anywhere, and a Khasi hill capital that plays its own music.

Taj Mahal (Agra)

The Taj Mahal, in a city almost everyone leaves the same day - and one night is what buys you sunrise on it.

Udaipur

The one Rajasthan city built around water rather than desert - marble palaces mirrored in a lake, with the Aravallis behind.

Varanasi

The oldest living city in India, where an entire Hindu life cycle plays out in public on a stone stair above the Ganges.