Mandu

Mandu was a Paramara stronghold that the Delhi Sultanate's governor Dilawar Khan Ghuri made independent in 1401; his son Hoshang Shah moved the Malwa capital here, and under the Khalji sultans, especially the pleasure-loving Ghiyas-ud-din, it became Shadiabad, the city of joy. The plateau is cut off by ravines on every side and entered through the Delhi Darwaza, one of twelve gates. The Royal Enclave holds the Jahaz Mahal, a 120-metre-long palace built narrow between the Munj and Kapur tanks so that in the rains it seems to sail, its roof of domes and pavilions doubled in the water; beside it the Hindola Mahal's sloping buttresses and the Champa Baodi stepwell built for Ghiyas-ud-din's household of thousands.

The Village Group has Hoshang Shah's Tomb, India's first marble mausoleum, whose lattice and dome Shah Jahan's architects studied before the Taj, and the Jami Masjid modelled on the great mosque of Damascus. At the plateau's southern lip, Baz Bahadur's Palace and Roopmati's Pavilion tell Malwa's love story: the sultan who lost his kingdom to Akbar's general Adham Khan and the singer who took poison rather than be captured; from her pavilion you look down to the Narmada glinting on the plain far below. Mandu is at its most beautiful in the monsoon, when the lakes fill and the baobab trees, brought from Africa centuries ago, come into leaf; their sour fruit, Mandu ki imli, is sold at every gate.