Pune

Pune is the Maratha capital that became a university town, then a software city, and it holds all three identities at once. The Peshwas ruled much of India from Shaniwar Wada, the 1732 fortress whose Delhi Darwaza still carries its elephant spikes; the palace inside burned in 1828, so what you walk today is a great empty plinth with the outlines of rooms and a fountain, best seen at the evening sound-and-light show. Ten kilometres out, Sinhagad is the fort Tanaji Malusare took in 1670 and died for, and the dawn climb ends with hot pithla-bhakri and buttermilk sold from stone huts on the ramparts.

The city's temper is set by two things: students, from Fergusson College and a dozen institutes, and Ganeshotsav. Bal Gangadhar Tilak turned a household ritual into a public festival here in 1893 to gather crowds under British rule, and for ten days each monsoon the old lanes belong to the manache Ganpati, drums and lakhs of feet. Elsewhere the city keeps quieter things: the Aga Khan Palace, where Gandhi was interned in 1942 and Kasturba died; the eighth-century rock-cut Pataleshwar cave sitting in the middle of a busy road; and a food culture of misal, bakarwadi and the sweet mastani that Pune argues about endlessly.