Maharashtra

Maharashtra is divided down its length by the Sahyadri wall, and the humid coast on one side has little in common with the dry black-soil plateau on the other. The plateau holds the main reason to come. Ajanta's painted caves and Ellora's Kailasa temple — cut downward out of one hillside until a whole temple stood free of the rock — are the finest carving in India, and most visitors try to do both in a single day from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, the city long known as Aurangabad. Don't. Ajanta closes on Mondays and Ellora on Tuesdays, so they need separate days anyway. Reach Ajanta at opening: the caves are dim, and the paintings only come up off the wall once your eyes have had ten minutes to adjust. The coast is the other half. Murud-Janjira is a fort in the sea that nobody ever took, reached by sailboat. South of it the Konkan runs on for hundreds of kilometres in fishing villages where the road ends at the sand. If you come in the monsoon, spend it in the Ghats — Rajmachi, Harishchandragad, waterfalls coming straight out of the road cuttings. It is the one time of year the state looks green rather than brown.