Indien

Kachchh, India’s wild west, is a geographic phenomenon. The flat, tortoise-shaped land, edged by the Gulf of Kachchh and Great and Little Ranns, is a seasonal island. During the dry season, the Ranns are vast expanses of dried mud and blinding-white salt. Come the monsoon, they’re flooded first by seawater, then by fresh river water. The salt in the soil makes the low-lying marsh area almost completely barren. Only on scattered ‘islands’ above the salt level is there coarse grass, which provides fodder for the region’s wildlife.

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.

På fastlandet råder alkoholförbud. Men här på ön Diu flödar vinet, ölen och spriten. Inte så konstigt att den före detta portugisiska kolonin blivit ett populärt resmål för indier som vill släppa loss.

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.

Tåg genom Indien bjuder på fantastiska vyer, möten med människor och äventyr. Per J Andersson tog Ökenexpressen till Jaisalmer – här är guiden för tågresan. Plus tågtips från andra delar av Indien.

The west is in some ways quintessential Rajasthan, with all the romance of desert dunes, majestic forts and camel caravans. Most of the region is covered by the Thar Desert, which also extends into Punjab, Gujarat and Pakistan. The Thar is the world’s most populous arid zone, mostly covered by scrub vegetation, with plentiful villages eking out a living from their animals and maintaining a richly colourful desert culture. Three ancient and atmospheric cities form the focus of travel here, each with a monumental fort at its heart. Proud Jodhpur is a halfway house between the relatively urbane cities of eastern Rajasthan and the state’s wild west. Bikaner and above all Jaisalmer are relatively remote desert cities and popular starting points for desert safaris. You won’t quickly forget nights sleeping under the desert stars or your camel’s rhythmic progress across the landscape.

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.

Virginal Arunachal Pradesh appears as a giant patch of green on India’s map. The country's wildest and least explored state, Arunachal (literally, Land of Dawn-Lit Mountains) rises abruptly from the Assam plains as a mass of improbably steep and densely forested hills, culminating in snowcapped peaks along the Tibetan border. Arunachal lures travellers with the promise of adventurous journeys to remote mountain valleys and encounters with some of its 26 indigenous tribal peoples. Tourism infrastructure – such as hotels or even homestays – has yet to reach many areas; this is travel far beyond standard tourist trails.

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.

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.