Maharashtra

Maharashtra contains the country's financial capital, its most important cave paintings, some of its most extraordinary rock-cut temple architecture, and a coastline that the Maratha Empire once controlled so completely that it built sea forts on islands reachable only at low tide.

The Ajanta and Ellora cave complexes, a UNESCO double, are Maharashtra's most staggering cultural inheritance. Ajanta's 30 caves contain the finest surviving examples of ancient Indian painting — figures of such expressive precision that they influenced Buddhist art across Asia and are still studied by painters today. Ellora's 34 caves, spanning Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain traditions across 600 years, include the Kailash temple: a single monolithic temple carved downward from the top of a basalt cliff, removing an estimated 200,000 tonnes of rock to reveal a structure more complex than many cathedral interiors.

Mumbai is Maharashtra's other text, and it reads differently depending on where you stand. From the Gateway of India, the view takes in a succession of colonial-era buildings in Gothic Revival and Art Deco that together form one of the most coherent 19th and early 20th century urban streetscapes in Asia. From Dharavi, a few kilometres north, you see a community that houses up to a million people in one square kilometre and drives a recycling and manufacturing economy worth more than the GDP of several African countries.

The Maratha military legacy — the hill forts of Shivaji Maharaj, which dot the Sahyadri range in a system of defensive positions that allowed a smaller army to control a vast territory — is the less-visited but structurally impressive other Maharashtra. Sinhagad, Raigad, Pratapgad: each fort has its own chapter in the Maratha story, and walking them in the cool months gives a landscape perspective on the Deccan plateau that no museum can replicate.