The Length of the Country

Delhi is really two cities laid over each other, and today takes both. India Gate and Humayun's Tomb in the imperial south — the tomb is the drawing the Taj was later worked up from, and seeing it first makes Agra legible. Then Old Delhi by rickshaw and on foot: the spice market at Khari BaoliStepwellA well reached by a long descending staircase, so that water can still be drawn as the water table falls.Read in the glossary, Chandni Chowk, and Paranthe Wali Gali, where the lane is barely two arms wide and the parathas come out of the cauldron transformed. Lunch is eaten standing up.

A quieter Delhi day. Past Parliament House and Rashtrapati Bhavan on the Lutyens axis, then the Qutub Minar — seventy-two and a half metres, begun in 1193 and the oldest thing standing in the city. Birla House, where Gandhi spent his last 144 days and where the path he walked to the evening prayer is marked in stone. The afternoon ends in Lodhi Garden, which is a public park with fifteenth-century tombs in it and Delhi's best argument for itself.

The drive to Agra, then the fort. Agra Fort is the more interesting building of the two here and gets less time than it deserves: Shah Jahan spent his last eight years imprisoned inside it by his own son, with a view downriver of the tomb he had built for his wife. In the late afternoon, Mehtab Bagh on the opposite bank — the Moonlight Garden, laid out so the Taj sits precisely in its axis across the water.

At the Taj for sunrise, which is the only hour worth having it in — the marble takes colour off the sky and gives it back, and the crowds have not arrived. Back for breakfast, then west towards Jaipur. The stop on the way is Chand Baori at Abhaneri: 3,500 symmetrical steps descending thirteen storeys into the ground, built as a reservoir, a place to sit out the heat, and somewhere to wash before entering the temple next door. The play of light down the steps is the reason to stand there a while.

Jaipur was India's first planned city, laid out by Sawai Jai Singh II in 1727 on a grid that still works. There is more here than a day holds, so the day is built around what you actually want: Amber Fort, Hawa Mahal, Jal Mahal sitting in its lake, the Jantar Mantar observatory, Jaigarh or Nahargarh above the city, the Birla temple, Galtaji. Our recommendation is to give the afternoon to a walking tour of the old city instead — the bazaars, the lanes behind them, and the Rajasthani street food that does not make it onto hotel menus.

A morning transfer to the airport and the flight east to Varanasi, met on arrival and driven in. The rest of the day is deliberately open. Varanasi is not a city to be walked into straight off a flight — it is louder, older and more insistent than anywhere that comes before it on this route, and tomorrow starts before dawn.

On the water at dawn, in a private boat, as the light comes up over the far bank and the ghatsGhatA flight of steps leading down to a river or tank, used for bathing, worship and cremation.Read in the glossary begin. Varanasi has been continuously inhabited longer than any other city on earth and none of what happens on these steps in the morning is arranged for visitors — the bathing, the washing, the cremation ground further along that you will be taken past rather than to. Later, Sarnath, where the Buddha gave his first sermon after enlightenment, and where the quiet is a deliberate contrast.

A slow start, then a heritage walk into the old city at half past eleven — lanes too narrow for anything with an engine, shrines built into walls, and a guide who knows which doorways are worth going through. Lunch in one of the local restaurants rather than a hotel. The afternoon is for resting, because the evening is the Ganga AartiAartiA Hindu act of worship in which lamps of flame are circled before a deity or a sacred river, accompanied by bells, conch and chant.Read in the glossary: fire, bells and brass lamps on the ghat, performed at the river every night whether anyone is watching or not.

The flight south to Cochin, and with it a different country: coconut, sea air, Portuguese and Dutch and British layered over a spice port that was trading before any of them arrived. Met at the airport and driven to Fort Kochi. The rest of the day is yours, and after Varanasi you will probably want it.

Fort Kochi on foot, which is the only way it makes sense. St Francis Church, where Vasco da Gama was buried before they moved him; Santa Cruz Basilica; the Dutch cemetery; Jew Town and the synagogue; the Dutch Palace. Between them, godowns still stacked with pepper and ginger, streets that change language every few hundred metres, and the cantilevered Chinese fishing nets working the waterfront exactly as they have since the fourteenth century. In the evening, a KathakaliKathakaliThe classical dance-theatre of Kerala, in which heavily painted and costumed performers enact episodes from the epics through codified gesture and eye movement.Read in the glossary performance — arrive early for the makeup, which is the better half.

The drive inland and upward into the Western Ghats. The temperature drops about ten degrees between the coast and Munnar, the air changes, and the last hour is through tea — terraced across every slope in a green that does not look quite real the first time you see it. Arrive and settle in; the afternoon is for the view.

A full day in the high ranges. Eravikulam National Park, which holds most of the world's remaining Nilgiri tahrNilgiri tahrA stocky wild mountain goat found only in the high grasslands of the southern Western Ghats.Read in the glossary and looks across to Anamudi, the highest peak in India outside the Himalaya. A working tea factory, where the process from leaf to grade is more interesting than it sounds. Top Station for the view across into Tamil Nadu, and Munnar bazaar for the ordinary business of a hill town.

The Munnar–Thekkady road was named the most scenic drive in India, and the claim survives contact. Tea gardens give way to forest, the Ghats open and close around the road, waterfalls come down beside it, and Anamudi stands at 2,695 metres off to the north. It is a driving day and it is meant to be — there is no hurry to arrive.

The spice gardens, which is the whole reason Europe knew where Kerala was: cardamom, pepper, clove, nutmeg, vanilla, all growing within a few metres of each other and none of it obvious until it is pointed out. Then Kumily bazaar, and the rest of the day free. This is the last unhurried stop before the temple towns, and worth using as one.

Down out of the hills and across into Tamil Nadu. The Meenakshi temple is not a building so much as a walled city — 65,000 square metres, five gateway towers, two shrines, and 2,000 years of dynasties each adding to it, most substantially under Thirumalai Nayak in the seventeenth century. The Hall of a Thousand Pillars is the set piece: every pillar carved, and from any angle at all they line up. In the outer corridors are the musical pillars, cut from single stones, each sounding a different note when struck.

Thanjavur, and the Brihadeeswara temple, built by Rajaraja Chola I between 1003 and 1010 and still the most impressive thing the CholasCholaRelating to the Tamil dynasty that ruled much of southern India, and territories beyond it, between roughly the ninth and thirteenth centuries.Read in the glossary left. The dome weighs eighty tons, is granite, and was raised without any modern engineering. Nothing in the structure is bonded — no cement, no soil, no binding agent, just interlocking stone. The outer walls carry the 81 karanas of Bharatanatyam carved in sequence, and the wall paintings were made with colour taken from flowers, spices and leaves.

North-east towards the coast, stopping at Chidambaram. The Nataraja temple here is unusual to the point of being unique: there is no lingam. The presiding deity is space itself, and behind the golden-roofed sanctum with its dancing Shiva there is only a black screen, standing for the sky. Then on to Pondicherry, where the street signs turn French and the sea wall runs the length of the town.

The old town in the morning — the grid of the French quarter, ochre walls, bougainvillea, and the Tamil town on the other side of the canal, which is the half most visitors miss. Then Auroville, the experimental township founded in 1968, and its Ganesh temple. The rest of the day is free; the main market in the late afternoon is the best hour for it.

A short coastal drive north to Mahabalipuram and into the hotel. The afternoon is for the town's small market, which sells mostly to the stone carvers who still work here — the same granite, and in a few workshops much the same technique, as the seventh-century sculptors a few hundred metres away.

Mahabalipuram was a working port when the Pallavas ruled here between the fourth and ninth centuries, and they spent the good years building. The five rathas, each a complete temple cut from a single outcrop of living rock. The great relief panels. And the Shore Temple, one of the oldest stone temples in India, built from cut blocks rather than carved from the ground, standing directly against the sea that has been eroding it for thirteen hundred years. The whole site is UNESCO-listed and repays a full day.

A day with nothing in it. Three weeks and the length of the country are behind you, and the last full day is on the beach or in the spa, at whatever pace you like. It is here on purpose — the flight home goes better after it.

The coastal road to Chennai airport for onward flights. It is about two hours, and the East Coast Road is a good last look at the country you have just crossed from the top of it to the bottom.