Ragas & Rhythms: The Music of India

Morning with a tabla master: the language of bols spoken hand-to-drum, your own first tin-tal cycle attempted and forgiven. Afternoon in the luthiers' lane where sitarsSitarA long-necked plucked string instrument of North India, with sympathetic strings beneath the frets that ring on untouched.Read in the glossary are born — gourds curing on rooftops, bridges filed to the sympathetic buzz — and evening at a khanqah for qawwaliQawwaliThe devotional music of Sufi Islam, sung by a group with harmonium, percussion and driving handclaps, intended to carry singer and listener towards religious ecstasy.Read in the glossary, devotion at full volume.

Fly to Varanasi, seat of the Banaras gharana, where music and liturgy share a riverbank. Evening on the water: 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's bells and fire from a private boat, then a rooftop shehnai recital — the instrument Bismillah Khan made immortal, played by his lineage, over the river that taught him.

The journey's signature hour: a dawn raga sung on a ghatGhatA flight of steps leading down to a river or tank, used for bathing, worship and cremation.Read in the glossary-side platform as the sun lifts out of the river — Bhairav, the morning's own scale, with the city waking in accompaniment. Later, a sitar house-concert in the musicians' quarter and an afternoon lesson: your host teaches you to actually hear the drone.

Fly south across the great musical divide into the Carnatic world. Chennai — whose December 'Music Season' runs thousands of concerts — keeps sabha culture alive year-round: tonight, a kutcheri with front-row seats and a pre-concert briefing on kritis, korvais and why the mridangam solo will make the audience laugh with delight.

Morning on the composers' trail: the Kapaleeshwarar temple's musical liturgy, a veena master's home studio where the instrument of goddesses is strung and taught, and an afternoon nadaswaram-and-thavil temple procession — the loudest unamplified instrument on earth, in its natural habitat.

To Kerala, and the harbour city of Kochi. Late afternoon behind the scenes as Kathakali artists paint their faces — an hour of pigment transforming men into gods — then the performance: drums, eyes, and a mythology told entirely through the body. Front row, with the story decoded beside you.

A morning boat into the backwaters for Kerala's water-borne music: a vanchipattu boat-song crew singing the oar-rhythm that once raced snake boats, and a village temple's percussion ensemble rehearsing the five-instrument panchari melam. Afternoon at leisure in Fort Kochi's lanes; farewell dinner with one last surprise recital.

A harbour breakfast, a last filter coffee, and flights home via Kochi. Your playlist — every raga, kriti and rhythm of the journey, recorded where permitted and licensed where not — arrives as you land, sequenced by your musicologist with liner notes. The week has a soundtrack; you were there for the original.