Alleppey

An eighteenth-century observatory of nineteen masonry astronomical instruments, including the world's largest stone sundial.

A four-hundred-year palace complex built in stages along Lake Pichola, with courtyards, mirror rooms and a museum of the Mewar dynasty.

The artificial lake at the centre of Udaipur, created in 1362, with island palaces reached by boat from the city palace jetty.

The Taj Mahal is a white marble mausoleum built by Shah Jahan for Mumtaz Mahal between 1632 and 1653, set in a formal charbagh garden on the Yamuna in Agra. Inlaid stone work covers the surfaces, and the symmetry only breaks at the emperor's own later tomb inside. It is closed on Fridays and busiest immediately after opening.

The backwaters are a 900-kilometre network of canals, lagoons and lakes running parallel to the Arabian Sea coast, lined with villages, rice paddies and coir workshops. Converted rice barges, kettuvallam, are hired with crew for overnight trips from Alleppey and Kumarakom. Smaller canoes reach the narrow channels the barges cannot.

Ladakh is a high-altitude desert in the Indian Himalaya, with Tibetan Buddhist monasteries on ridges above the Indus and passes over 5,000 metres. Leh, at 3,500 metres, is the base, and altitude acclimatisation is a real planning constraint rather than a formality. Road access from Manali and Srinagar is seasonal; flights operate year-round.