Jharkhand

Almost everyone travelling in Jharkhand is a pilgrim or here on business. That is the character of the state: a forested plateau with very few tourists, very little tourist infrastructure, and scenery that needs neither. Ranchi is the base. The waterfalls around it are worth a day, and then the road west to Netarhat, at 1,128 metres in Latehar district, with Betla National Park in the Palamau Tiger Reserve beyond it. That is a four or five day loop and it is enough. People who bolt Deoghar on to it lose two days to driving; it sits at the far eastern end of the state and belongs to a separate trip. It is worth that separate trip. The Baidyanath temple at Deoghar draws the Shravani Mela, when pilgrims carry Ganges water roughly 105 kilometres on foot from Sultanganj in Bihar. Parasnath, at 1,365 metres the highest hill in the state, is the Jain site of Shikharji, where twenty of the twenty-four tirthankaras are held to have attained moksha. The climb is a long one and people start it before dawn. October to March. The monsoon fills the waterfalls and wrecks the roads.