Indien

Explore beyond the city center in Mumbai and you'll uncover furious energy, unique bazaars, hidden temples, hipster enclaves and India's premier restaurants and nightlife.

With shimmering turquoise waters fringed by primeval jungle, fantastic diving, and sugar-white, sun-toasted beaches melting under flame-and-purple sunsets, the far-flung Andaman Islands are the perfect Indian escape.

Nestled amid evergreen hills that line the southernmost edge of Karnataka is the luscious Kodagu (Coorg) region, gifted with emerald landscapes and hectares of plantations. A major centre for coffee and spice production, this rural expanse is also home to the Kodava people, who are divided into 1000 clans. The uneven terrain and cool climate make it a fantastic area for trekking, birdwatching or lazily ambling down little-trodden paths winding around carpeted hills. All in all, Kodagu is rejuvenation guaranteed.

There are few more refreshing Tamil Nadu moments than leaving the heat-soaked plains for the sharp pinch of a Kodaikanal night or morning. This misty hill station, 75 miles (120km) northwest of Madurai in the protected Palani Hills, is more relaxed and intimate than its big sister Ooty (Kodai is the ‘Princess of Hill Stations’, Ooty the Queen). It’s not all cold either; days feel more like deep spring than early winter.

Välkommen in i en myllrande verkstad som upptar en hel stadsdel i norra Kolkata. I Kumortuli ser man vidden av festivaler, firanden och den indiska gudavärlden – här tillverkas nämligen skulpturer för hinduismens miljoner gudar och att vandra genom kvarter och gränder är konstnärligt och kulturellt häpnadsväckande.

Ringed by an arc of green mountains, Srinagar's greatest drawcard is mesmerizingly placid Dal Lake, on which a bright array of stationary houseboats and shikara (gondola-like boats) add a splash of color and a unique opportunity for romantic chill-outs. Charming Mughal gardens dot the lake's less urbanized eastern shore; while the old town bustles with Central Asian–style bazaars and a collection of soulful Sufi shrines, as well as a fortress and many historic wooden mosques. Add in a mild summer climate, feisty Kashmiri cuisine and famous local apples, walnuts and almonds, and you have one of India’s top tourist draws.

A particularly tourist-friendly region, thanks to its strong expatriate connections with the UK and Canada, Punjab, the homeland of India’s Sikh population, provides a wonderful opportunity to go traipsing into the backyards of North India. The Golden Temple in Amritsar is an undoubted highlight, but Punjab hides other small treasures among its agricultural expanses. Rarely visited towns like Patiala, Bathinda and Faridkot contain seemingly lost-in-time marketplaces and crumbling forts that hint at faded grandeur, while welcoming gurdwaras (Sikh temples) are to be found across the state.

Bundi is a captivating town of narrow lanes of Brahmin-blue houses with a temple at every turn. There are fascinating step-wells, reflective lakes, and colorful bazaars. Dominating Bundi is a fantastical palace of faded parchment cupolas and loggias rising from the hills behind the town. Though an increasingly popular traveler hang-out, Bundi attracts nothing like the tourist crowds of places such as Jaipur or Udaipur. Few places in Rajasthan retain so much of the magical atmosphere of centuries past.

Stretching 600km along the Brahmaputra River Valley, with a spur down to the hilly southeast, Assam is the largest and most accessible of the Northeast States. Well known for its national parks abounding in rhinoceroses, elephants, deer and primates (with respectable tiger numbers too), it welcomes visitors with a subtly flavoured cuisine and a hospitable population with a vibrant artistic heritage. The archetypal Assamese landscape is a golden-green panorama of rice fields and manicured tea estates, framed by the blue mountains of Arunachal Pradesh in the north and the highlands of Meghalaya and Nagaland to the south. The birthplace of Indian tea, Assam has more than 3000 sq km of land carpeted in bright-green tea gardens, and visits to these estates are high on many travellers' itineraries.

India’s third-largest city is a daily festival of human existence, simultaneously noble and squalid, cultured and desperate, decidedly futuristic though still in transition. By its old spelling, Calcutta readily conjures images of human suffering to most Westerners – although that's not a complete picture of this 330-year-old metropolis. Locally, Kolkata is regarded as India’s intellectual, artistic and cultural capital. Although poverty is certainly apparent, the self-made middle class drives the city's core machinery, a nascent hipster culture thrives among its millennial residents and its dapper Bengali gentry frequent grand colonial-era clubs.