Haryana

Haryana is the plain Delhi eats from and drives through, and it repays anyone who stops. Kurukshetra is the heart of it: Brahma Sarovar, one of the largest sacred tanks in Asia, fills with bathers during a solar eclipse, and at Jyotisar a banyan marks where Krishna is said to have delivered the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna. Gita Jayanti Mahotsav in late autumn brings aartis, recitations and craft stalls to the tank's steps. Panipat carries three battles that redirected Indian history, in 1526, 1556 and 1761. Rakhigarhi in Hisar district is the largest Harappan site in India, older than the cities of Sindh. For gentler days there is Pinjore's seventeenth-century terraced charbagh below the Shivaliks, the pine-and-oak ridges of Morni Hills, and Sultanpur National Park near Gurugram, where painted storks and Siberian visitors crowd the shallows each winter. The Surajkund Mela near Faridabad gathers craftspeople from across India every February. Signature journeys stitch Kurukshetra and Panipat into a Delhi-to-Amritsar drive.