Awadh · Upper Indus–Gangetic Plain
Begun by Asaf-ud-Daula in 1784 as famine relief — the account repeated locally is that labourers built by day while impoverished gentry, who could not be seen doing manual work, demolished a portion at night so the employment would last. Its central hall is vaulted without beams or pillars, and the maze above exists to carry that roof.
Best time: October–March, early morning.
A sixty-foot gateway of 1784 modelled on a gate at Constantinople, which is why it carries the name Rumi. It marks the entry to the old city and appears on everything the city prints.
Muhammad Ali Shah's mourning hall of 1838, hung with Belgian chandeliers and gilt, and still the focus of Muharram processions rather than a museum piece.
Left deliberately in ruins since the months-long siege of 1857, shot walls and all. It is the most legible 1857 site in India, and reads very differently depending on which account you arrive with.
A Sarayu-bank temple town of very long standing, the setting of the Ramayana and a centre of the Ramcharitmanas tradition. It draws pilgrims year-round and enormous crowds at Ram Navami and Deepotsav.
Best time: October–March.
The forest in which the Puranas are framed as being narrated to assembled sages — the narrative device of a whole literature attached to a real grove and a circular tank near the Gomti.
The Jetavana monastery, where the Buddha is recorded as having spent more rain-retreats than anywhere else. Excavated mounds at Sahet and Mahet, with Thai, Burmese and Sri Lankan monasteries built around them.
An eleventh-century warrior's shrine whose annual Jeth mela has long drawn Hindu and Muslim pilgrims together — one of the most conspicuously shared shrines in north India, and a periodically contested one.
The dargah of Haji Waris Ali Shah, whose Warsi order admitted followers of any faith. Its October urs runs with qawwali for ten nights.
Terai sal forest and the Girwa river — one of the few landscapes in India holding gharial, Gangetic dolphin, tiger and swamp deer together. Part of the Dudhwa tiger reserve complex.
Best time: November–April.
Tens of thousands of hectares of orchard producing the Dussehri, which holds a geographical indication and whose parent tree the growers can point to. Best visited in the last week of June.
Best time: June.
Claude Martin's part-palace, part-tomb, part-folly of the 1790s, now a school — and the only school in the world awarded a battle honour, for its pupils' part in the 1857 siege.
A shallow monsoon-fed lake on the Lucknow–Kanpur road that fills with migratory waterfowl from November.
The river the city turned its back on for a century and is now building towards again. The old ghats remain the place to see Lucknow at dawn.
Places worth visiting in Awadh — heritage sites, wildlife, pilgrimage and landscape, with the best time to go. (14)