Prayagraj

Everything in Prayagraj points to the Sangam. Hire a boat from Kila Ghat before nine, when the light is still soft, and the boatman will row you out to where the two colours of water meet, the silt-brown Ganga sliding beside the deeper green of the Yamuna; pilgrims dip, pandits sit on floating platforms, and gulls wheel for puffed rice. Above the confluence is the fort Akbar built in 1583, mostly an army base but with the Patalpuri temple and the Akshayavat, the deathless banyan, open to visitors, and beside it the Bade Hanuman temple where the deity lies horizontal and is submerged by the monsoon river each year.

In the city, Anand Bhavan is the Nehru family home where much of the freedom movement was planned, and Swaraj Bhavan next door is where Indira Gandhi was born. Khusro Bagh holds the sandstone tombs of Jahangir's rebel son in a walled garden, and All Saints Cathedral is an outsize piece of Gothic Revival from 1887. Every January and February the Magh Mela sets up a tent city on the sands for a month; every twelfth year it becomes the Kumbh, and in 2025 more than 600 million visits were recorded across 45 days.

Eat kachori at Netram, samosas at Hari Ram, and in winter the pink-fleshed Allahabadi Surkha guava that has a reputation across the whole of the north.