Maharashtra

Thirty rock-cut Buddhist caves stand in a horseshoe cliff above a river bend in the north of the state, excavated in two phases between roughly the second century BCE and the sixth century CE. What makes them extraordinary is not the architecture but the paint: the murals in a handful of the caves depict the Jataka tales — stories of the Buddha's previous lives — with a command of colour, volume and human expression that influenced Buddhist art from Sri Lanka to Japan. The lotus-bearing Bodhisattva of Cave 1 is among the most reproduced images in Indian art history. The site was abandoned when patronage moved elsewhere, was taken back by forest, and was rediscovered in 1819 by a British hunting party that followed a tiger into the ravine. Practically: the caves are a couple of hours from Aurangabad, closed one day a week, and lighting inside is deliberately dim to protect the pigment, so photography is restricted in the painted caves. Take a guide — without the narrative the panels are hard to read — and allow three to four hours, more if the painting is what brought you.

Ellora holds thirty-four caves cut between roughly the seventh and tenth centuries, and they belong to three religions in sequence — Buddhist, Hindu and Jain — along the same cliff, which is itself the interesting fact. But the reason to come is Cave 16. The Kailasa temple is not a cave in any ordinary sense: it is a complete freestanding temple complex, with gateway, Nandi pavilion, main shrine and surrounding galleries, carved downward out of a single basalt hillside by removing something in the order of two hundred thousand tonnes of rock. The work was done top-down, which means there was no possibility of correcting a mistake, and the finished structure covers roughly twice the footprint of the Parthenon and stands considerably higher. Life-size stone elephants appear to carry the plinth; long panels narrate the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Ellora is much closer to Aurangabad than Ajanta and closes on a different day of the week, which is what makes the two a two-day proposition rather than one. Give the Kailasa an hour of its own before looking at anything else.

Mumbai is Maharashtra's capital, its economic centre and the reason most visitors arrive, and it has its own guide here — the architecture, the food, Elephanta and the practicalities are covered in the Mumbai city guide rather than repeated. What belongs on a state page is the relationship. Mumbai is where Maharashtra meets everywhere else: a Marathi city that is also Gujarati, South Indian, Muslim, Parsi and Konkani, and whose commercial gravity shapes the whole state's economy from the sugar cooperatives inland to the mango orchards down the coast. Two things there are specifically Maharashtrian rather than generically Mumbai. The first is Ganesh Chaturthi in late summer, when neighbourhood pandals across the city hold Ganesh idols for ten days before immense processions carry them to the sea for immersion — it is the state's defining festival and Mumbai's most emotionally charged days of the year. The second is the Maharashtrian thali, best eaten at the old Dadar institutions rather than in a hotel: a plate that explains the state's cooking better than any menu.

Pune sits on the plateau three hours from Mumbai by expressway, and it is the state's cultural and intellectual centre rather than its commercial one. It was the seat of the Peshwas, the Maratha empire's administrators, and Shaniwar Wada — the fortified palace complex whose interior burned in the nineteenth century — still holds the ground in the old city, with the gateway and the walls giving a fair sense of the scale. The Aga Khan Palace on the northern edge is where Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi were held during the Quit India period, and it is now a memorial and museum. Beyond the history, Pune is a student city with one of the largest concentrations of colleges in India, a growing technology sector, and a food culture that locals will argue is more authentic than Mumbai's: misal pav in the morning at places that have made nothing else for decades, sabudana vada, and the Irani bakery tradition that produced shrewsbury biscuits and mawa cake. Sinhagad fort, an hour out, gives a hilltop lunch of pithla-bhakri and a view over the Sahyadris that explains why the Marathas fortified this landscape.

Maharashtra has several hundred hill forts, most of them built, captured or rebuilt by Shivaji and the Maratha empire along the Sahyadri escarpment, and fort trekking is the state's characteristic outdoor pursuit — walking with history attached rather than scenery alone. The accessible tier suits anyone reasonably fit: Lohagad and Rajmachi near Lonavala, and Sinhagad near Pune, all with clear paths and villages at the base. The serious tier is a different proposition: Rajgad, Shivaji's first capital, is a plateau fortress that takes several hours of climbing; Harishchandragad ends at an overhanging cliff face that has become one of the most photographed viewpoints in India; and Kalsubai, the state's highest point at 1,646 metres, finishes on fixed metal ladders. The monsoon is the famous season — the range turns green, waterfalls appear on every face, and half of Mumbai and Pune walks up something at the weekend — but the trails are slippery, leeches are routine, and the cloud can close a view entirely. Winter is clearer and colder. Go with a group on the harder routes; the escarpment is unforgiving of navigational error.

The Konkan runs some seven hundred kilometres from Mumbai to the Goa border, a narrow strip between the Ghats and the sea, and it is where Maharashtra keeps the coastline nobody photographs. The Konkan Railway, completed in the 1990s across roughly two thousand bridges and ninety-odd tunnels, is one of the great train journeys in India and the practical way to travel it. Alibaug is the weekend escape closest to Mumbai, reachable by ferry. Further south, Kashid and Harihareshwar hold beaches and a cliff temple; Ratnagiri is the centre of Alphonso mango country, whose short spring season is a serious local event; and Tarkarli near the Goa border has the clearest water in the state, some coral, and Sindhudurg — a fort built on an island by Shivaji, with what is said to be his handprint set into the wall. The cooking here is Malvani, distinct from anything inland: coconut-based fish and prawn curries, the kokum drink sol kadhi, and dried and fried Bombay duck. Infrastructure is homestays and state-run resorts rather than luxury hotels, which is most of the appeal.

Nashik holds two identities that rarely coexist. It is one of Hinduism's holiest cities, sitting on the Godavari, with ghats where pilgrims perform rites, temples associated with the Ramayana, and — every twelve years, on a cycle worth checking rather than assuming — one of the four hosting cities of the Kumbh Mela, which brings tens of millions of people. The Trimbakeshwar temple nearby is one of the twelve Jyotirlinga shrines, among the most significant Shiva temples in India. It is also the centre of Indian wine: the valley sits at around six hundred metres, which gives it the temperature swing the vine needs, and the great majority of the country's wine is made here. Several estates run tastings and tours, and the largest has effectively created domestic wine tourism, complete with an annual music festival at the vineyard. The wines have improved markedly and travel less well than the visit does, so drink them here. Between the two, the old Panchavati quarter and the Kalaram temple carry the city's older history, including its place in twentieth-century social reform.

Mumbai is the main gateway, with Pune and Aurangabad both served by domestic flights — and flying into Aurangabad is the sensible move if the caves are your priority, since the road from Mumbai is long. The rail network is the densest in India, the Mumbai-Pune expressway is quick, and state and private buses reach everywhere else. The seasons differ by zone: the coast is humid year-round with a ferocious monsoon; the plateau is drier and more temperate; the Ghats are transformed by the rains and cool in winter. October to March suits most of the state. On food, where Indian regional cooking as a whole is mapped in the India food guide, Maharashtra's own contribution is worth seeking deliberately: vada pav and misal pav as everyday staples, puran poli at festivals, thalipeeth and pithla-bhakri in the countryside, Kolhapuri cooking's precise and serious use of chilli in the south, and Malvani seafood on the coast. It is a cuisine of everyday food done exactingly rather than of banquet dishes.