Uttar Pradesh

The most visited state in India contains the Taj Mahal, the Mughal capital at Agra, the holiest city on the Ganges, and the birthplace of Lord Krishna — a concentration of significance per square kilometre that is genuinely without parallel on earth.

Uttar Pradesh is where India's history most visibly accumulates. The Mughal Empire's greatest buildings — the Taj, the Agra Fort, Fatehpur Sikri — sit within an hour of each other in a triangle of extraordinary density. Understanding Agra requires understanding that the Taj Mahal was completed in 1653 and has been the most famous building in the world for most of the time since, which means it has had three and a half centuries of visitors, conquerors, photographers, and restorers all doing things to it — and it still, somehow, looks like something that landed from elsewhere.

Varanasi operates on a completely different logic — one that has nothing to do with Mughal architecture and everything to do with the idea that dying here releases the soul from the cycle of rebirth. The city has been continuously inhabited for at least three thousand years. Mark Twain wrote that it was 'older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.' The dawn boat ride on the river, with priests conducting Ganga Aarti while the city wakes on its crumbling ghats, is one of the essential experiences of travelling anywhere.

Lucknow, the state's capital, carries the legacy of the Nawabs of Awadh — a court culture that produced the finest Urdu poetry, the most elaborate culinary tradition, and the most extreme courtesy in India. The Bara Imambara's vaulted hall, spanning 50 metres without a single support column, is an engineering achievement that most modern architects cannot adequately explain.