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For many visitors, particularly cashed-up young Indian tourists from Bangalore and Mumbai plus Europeans on package holidays, this is Goa’s party strip, where the raves and hippies have made way for modern thumping nightclubs and wall-to-wall drinking. The Calangute market area and the main Baga road can get very busy but everything you could ask for – from a Thai massage to a tattoo – is in close proximity and the beach is lined with an excellent selection of increasingly sophisticated restaurant shacks with sunbeds, wi-fi and attentive service.

The deep-cut Shayok and Nubra River Valleys offer tremendous scenery on a grand scale, with green oasis villages surrounded by thrillingly stark scree slopes, and harsh arid mountains, strongly reminiscent of Pakistan's Northern Areas. There are sand dunes, monasteries, a ruined palace and – at Turtuk and Bogdang – a whole different culture (Balti) to discover. Permits are required by foreigners.

Spectacularly jagged, arid mountains enfold this magical Buddhist ex-kingdom. Picture-perfect gompas (Tibetan Buddhist monasteries) dramatically crown rocky outcrops next to fluttering prayer flags and whitewashed stupas, while prayer wheels spun clockwise release merit-making mantras. Gompa interiors are a riot of golden Buddhas and intricately colourful murals and home to red-robed monks. It's a little corner of Tibet marooned in the furthest reaches of India.

A regular nominee among travelers’ favorite beaches in India, Gokarna attracts a crowd for a low-key, chilled-out beach holiday and not for full-scale parties. Most accommodation is in thatched bamboo huts along the town's several stretches of blissful coast.

Long considered the ‘wild east’ of India, Nagaland abounds in primeval beauty and tribal culture. Its dazzling hills and valleys, reaching right up to the India–Myanmar border, are other-worldly places where, until not long ago, headhunting Naga tribes fought off intruders and each other. Today Nagas have abandoned headhunting and turned to Christianity. Traditional lifestyles linger strongest in the north, where many people live in thatched longhouses and follow farming and hunting lifestyles. The sense of Naga identity among the 16 or 17 main tribal groups, with multiple languages but cultural similarities, is strong. Traditional attire comes out in full feather-and-spear colour at the many tribal festivals, above all December's Hornbill Festival near Kohima.

The Malabar Coast from Kozhikode (Calicut) north to the Karnataka border features a string of coastal villages and dazzling honey-toned beaches far less touristed than those in southern Kerala. For many, this quieter pace is an attraction in its own right. The main draws in this part of coastal Kerala are the beautiful, undeveloped sands and the enthralling theyyam possession rituals.

Separated from fertile Lahaul by the soaring 4551m Kunzum Pass, the trans-Himalayan region of Spiti is another chunk of Tibet marooned within India, a kind of 'mini-Ladakh' with fewer tourists. The scattered villages in this serrated moonscape arrive like mirages while the turquoise-grey ribbon of the Spiti River is your near-constant companion, albeit sometimes way below in precipitous gorges.

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The rolling hills around Munnar, South India's largest tea-growing region, are carpeted in emerald-green tea plantations, contoured, clipped and sculpted like ornamental hedges. The low Western Ghats scenery is magnificent – you’re often up above the clouds watching veils of mist clinging to mountaintops. Munnar itself is a traffic-clogged administration hub, not unlike a North Indian hill station, but wander just a few miles out and you'll be engulfed in a sea of a thousand shades of green.

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.