Grand India Odyssey: Delhi to the Coromandel Coast

Airport pickup and an easy first afternoon in Lutyens' Delhi to let the flight wear off. Late in the day, a walk through Lodhi Garden among the fifteenth-century Sayyid and Lodi tombs, where the city comes to run and play badminton around six-hundred-year-old masonry, and then dinner nearby. We keep day one deliberately short.

Morning in Old Delhi: the courtyard of Jama Masjid, then a cycle-rickshaw through the wire-tangled lanes of Chandni Chowk for jalebi at Old Famous Jalebi Wala and mutton burra at Karim's. Afternoon at Qutb Minar, where a seventy-three-metre victory tower begun in 1193 stands beside a fourth-century iron pillar that has never rusted, and a guided walk into Mehrauli Archaeological Park. Humayun's Tomb at closing light.

Leave after breakfast for 233 kilometres on the Yamuna Expressway, about three and a half hours to Agra. Afternoon inside Agra Fort, walking from the Jahangiri Mahal to the marble Musamman Burj where Shah Jahan spent his last eight years looking downriver at the tomb he had built. At dusk, cross to Mehtab Bagh on the far bank for the Taj in profile across the water.

At the east gate before sunrise, when the marble moves from grey to rose to white and the pietra dura inlay of jasper, carnelian and lapis begins to catch light. Two unhurried hours inside, then breakfast at the hotel. Late morning at Itmad-ud-Daulah, the tomb Nur Jahan finished in 1628 for her father and the first Mughal building faced entirely in marble. Afternoon free, or an inlay workshop with a family of Agra artisans.

Check out early for the forty-kilometre drive to Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar's capital from 1571 to 1585 and given up when the water ran short: the Diwan-i-Khas with its single carved pillar, the Panch Mahal's five diminishing storeys, the marble dargah of Salim Chishti. Lunch near Bharatpur, then on toward Jaipur with a stop at Abhaneri, where the Chand Baori stepwell drops 3,500 narrow steps into the ground. About 240 kilometres in all.

Out by eight for Amber Fort, eleven kilometres north, to reach the Sheesh Mahal while the mirror work still catches low sun. Down past Panna Meena ka Kund and Jal Mahal into the walled city for the twenty-seven-metre Samrat Yantra sundial at Jantar Mantar, the City Palace and Hawa Mahal's 953 windows from a rooftop opposite. Afternoon in Johari Bazaar for gems and block prints, and dal baati churma at the end of it.

Three hundred and ninety-three kilometres of NH48, about seven hours with stops, and the one long halt is Chittorgarh: the largest fort in India by area, with Rana Kumbha's nine-storey Vijay Stambh of 1448 carved from base to finial. Down into the Aravalli folds to Udaipur in the late afternoon, and a first walk along the Pichola ghats as the lights come on across the water.

The City Palace at opening, its Mor Chowk peacocks set in coloured glass and the Zenana courtyards above the lake, then the seventeenth-century Jagdish Temple and the old city's miniature-painting workshops. Late afternoon up to Sajjangarh, the monsoon palace on the ridge, for the whole valley at once, and a boat across Lake Pichola at the hour the palace walls turn amber.

A slow morning in Udaipur, then the short hop to the airport and an hour and twenty minutes in the air to Mumbai. The country changes completely on that flight: desert kingdom to a seven-island port of twenty million. Evening on Marine Drive as the streetlights come on along the curve that the city calls the Queen's Necklace, and bhelpuri at Chowpatty.

The nine o'clock ferry from the Gateway of India out to Elephanta, an hour across the harbour, for the sixth-century rock-cut caves and the six-metre Trimurti Sadashiva carved out of the living basalt. Back by early afternoon for a walking tour of the Fort district: the Victorian Gothic High Court and University, Kala Ghoda's galleries, and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, still the busiest station in the country.

A morning flight down the Konkan coast, an hour in the air, and by lunchtime you are in a place that was Portuguese for 451 years. Afternoon at Old Goa for the Basilica of Bom Jesus, built between 1594 and 1605 and holding the relics of St Francis Xavier, and the vast Se Cathedral beside it. Then Panjim's Fontainhas quarter on foot, ochre and blue and green, before sunset from Chapora headland.

A morning with nothing in it but the Arabian Sea, then inland after lunch to a working spice plantation in the Ponda hills for pepper vines, nutmeg, vanilla and a Goan lunch served on a banana leaf. Late afternoon at Fort Aguada, built by the Portuguese in 1612 to hold the mouth of the Mandovi, and a last night of xacuti, cafreal and poi bread.

The long inland drive: 330 kilometres east and south, about seven hours, climbing out of the coastal strip through the Western Ghats and onto the Deccan plateau, where the green stops and a landscape of granite boulders begins. Arrive at Hampi in the late afternoon, in time to be at the Virupaksha temple gopuram for the evening lamps and the first sight of the boulder fields.

A full day inside the capital that Persian and Portuguese visitors called the richest city they had seen, sacked in 1565 after Talikota and never rebuilt. The Vitthala temple complex with its stone chariot and its ringing columns, the Hemakuta hillock shrines, the royal enclosure with the Lotus Mahal and the elephant stables, and Matanga Hill at sunset over twenty-six square kilometres of ruin.

An early start for the 160-kilometre drive to Hubballi, about three hours, and then the flight south to Kochi with a connection through Bengaluru. You land in a different climate: coconut, humidity and backwater. Check into Fort Kochi and walk out at dusk to the Chinese fishing nets on the point, which have been counterweighted and dipped in the same way since the fourteenth century.

Fort Kochi and Mattancherry on foot: St Francis Church of 1503, the oldest European church in India and where Vasco da Gama was buried before his remains went home to Lisbon; the Dutch Palace with its Ramayana murals; the Paradesi Synagogue of 1568 with its Cantonese floor tiles; and the spice godowns of Jew Town. Evening at a Kathakali performance, arriving early to watch the two hours of make-up.

South to the Alappuzha backwaters for a full day on the water: a converted kettuvallam rice barge through the wide reaches of Vembanad, then a country boat into the narrow canals where the villages are, below the level of the lake behind their bunds. Karimeen fish and red rice for lunch on board, toddy tapping in the palms along the bank, and back to Fort Kochi after dark.

East out of Kerala on the Kambam valley road, 265 kilometres and about six hours, climbing through cardamom and tea and dropping into the dry Vaigai plain on the far side, where the language, the food and the temple architecture all change inside an afternoon. Reach Madurai in time for the palliyarai ceremony, when Sundareswarar is carried in procession to Meenakshi's chamber and the temple closes for the night.

Meenakshi Amman Temple at opening, when the corridors smell of camphor and jasmine and the fourteen towers are still catching the flat morning light, the tallest of them fifty-two metres of painted stucco figures. The Thousand Pillar Hall, then Thirumalai Nayakkar Mahal of 1636 and the flower market at Puthu Mandapam, where jasmine is sold by weight. Banana-leaf lunch, and an afternoon that stays out of the sun.

A short flight to Chennai, an hour and ten minutes, and an afternoon in Mylapore, the oldest quarter of the city: the Kapaleeshwarar temple tank and its gopuram, the Sunday-morning-any-day bustle of the surrounding streets, and San Thome Basilica, built over what tradition holds is the tomb of the apostle Thomas. Sunset walk on Marina Beach among the kite sellers and the sundal carts.

Out early down the East Coast Road for the fifty-five kilometres to Mahabalipuram, the seventh-century Pallava port: the Shore Temple standing in the spray, the Five Rathas each cut from a single boulder, and Arjuna's Penance, the largest bas-relief in the world, with its elephants crossing a fissure carved as a river. Back along the coast for a late lunch and the evening flight out.