Indien

Delstaten Goa på Indiens västkust är sedan länge känd för sin festliga och avslappnade atmosfär. Men nu har myndigheterna infört förbud mot både alkohol och grillning på stränderna.

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.

A Portuguese colony for 426 years, tiny Diu island, linked by a bridge to Gujarat’s southern coast, is still infused with the history, architecture and, in some places, the cultural remnants of its European colonizers. The streets of the main town are clean, colorful and quiet once you get off the tourist-packed waterfront strip, and there are numerous crumbling Portuguese villas and churches. Although it's often thought of as being part of Gujarat, this is incorrect. With Daman it's actually a separate union territory known as Daman and Diu, and it has its own rules and government.

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.

Palolem is undoubtedly one of Goa’s most postcard-perfect beaches: a gentle curve of palm-fringed sand facing a calm bay. But in season the beachfront is transformed into a toy town of colourful and increasingly sophisticated timber and bamboo huts fronted by palm-thatch restaurants. It’s still a great place to be and is popular with backpackers, long-stayers and families. The protected bay is one of the safest swimming spots in Goa and you can comfortably kayak and paddleboard for hours here.

This ethereally beautiful valley stretches up through touristy, forest-ringed Kasol and the busy if grubby little pilgrim hot-springs town of Manikaran to a collection of villages around Barshani with glorious views of 5000m Himalayan peaks. Places like Pulga and Kalga here are key stops on the pre-Goa 'hummus trail' for young Israeli travellers, while Kasol and Tosh increasingly draw young Indian travellers and weekenders. The valley has plenty of hippie/backpacker hang-outs, with cheap accommodation, international food and nonstop music. The well-deserved reputation for charas (hashish) is most noted at the very odd village of Malana. Police sometimes make spot checks for drugs.

Welcome to the lush Western Ghats, some of the most precious heat relief in India. Rising like an impassable bulwark of evergreen and deciduous tangle, from north of Mumbai to the tip of Tamil Nadu, the World Heritage–listed Ghats (with an average elevation of 915m) contain 27% of India’s flowering plant species and an incredible array of endemic wildlife. In Tamil Nadu they rise to over 2000m in the Palani Hills around Kodaikanal and the Nilgiris around Ooty. British influence lingers a little stronger up in these hills, where colonialists built 'hill stations' to escape the sweltering plains and covered slopes in neatly trimmed tea plantations. It’s not just the air and (relative) lack of pollution that’s refreshing – there’s a certain acceptance of quirkiness and eccentricity here. Expect organic farms, handlebar-moustached trekking guides and leopard-print earmuffs.

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.

When travelers talk of staying in Dharamsala, McLeod Ganj is usually where they actually mean. A couple of miles north of Dharamsala proper (or six miles via the looping bus route), McLeod Ganj is the residence of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and home to a large Tibetan population, including many maroon-robed monks and nuns. The Tibetan government-in-exile is based in between at Gangchen Kyishong. McLeod attracts thousands of international visitors, many of them volunteering with the Tibetan community, taking courses in Buddhism, meditation or yoga, trekking in the Dhauladhar mountains, shopping for Tibetan crafts, or just hanging out enjoying the spiritual vibe and the plethora of good cafes where you're never far from an interesting conversation.

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.