Indien

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.

Founded in 1577 by the fourth Sikh guru, Guru Ram Das, Amritsar is home to the spectacular Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine and one of India’s most serene and humbling sights. The hyperactive streets surrounding the temple have been calmed to some extent by recent urban landscaping, including graceful pedestrianised walkways, but duck into any side alley and you’ll soon discover Amritsar’s fantastically frenetic old-city bazaars, sheltering a sensory overload of sights, sounds and smells.

Följ med till en myllrande megastad med kaféer, skuggiga trottoarer och egensinnig matkultur. Den forna imperiehuvudstaden är känd för sin fattigdom men kallas också The city of joy – njutningarnas stad.

If you have time to explore Chennai (formerly Madras), this 284-sq-mi (400-sq-km) conglomerate of urban villages and diverse neighborhoods making up Tamil Nadu's capital will pleasantly surprise you. Its role is as keeper of South Indian artistic, religious and culinary traditions.

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.

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.

Indien lämnar ingen oberörd, inte ens den mest luttrade resenären. Marcus Westberg gjorde en indisk rundresa som bjöd på snabba kast. Från yoga bland palmerna till stökiga nattbussfärder. Men till slut så kapitulerade även han inför Indiens skönhet. De flesta brukar göra det.

A sliver of fertile and densely populated land running from the tea-draped Himalayan foothills to the steamy mangroves of the Bay of Bengal, West Bengal presents a remarkable range of destinations and experiences within a single state. In the tropical southern areas, the wildlife-rich, mangrove-lined waterways of the Sundarbans vie for attention with Bishnupur's ornate terracotta Hindu temples and the cultured, arty vibes of Shantiniketan. Upstream from Kolkata (Calcutta) on the Hooghly River (a branch of the Ganges) you'll reach old European trading towns and three former Bengali capitals at Murshidabad, Gaur and Pandua. The cool northern hills are home not just to British colonialist hill stations like bustling Darjeeling and more laid-back Kalimpong, but also to fantastic vistas of massive Khangchendzonga, rolling green tea estates, some great hiking and the huffing and puffing 'toy trains' of the almost 140-year-old Darjeeling Himalayan Railway.

Indiska staden Calcutta är en megametropol otroligt mycket att se och göra – här tipsar vi dig om hur du tar dig runt, var du ska bo, äta och fika.

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.