Braj · Upper Indus–Gangetic Plain
The Janmabhoomi complex marks the traditional birthplace; the Dwarkadhish temple of 1814, built by a Gwalior treasurer, is the busiest working temple in the city, particularly at Holi and Janmashtami.
The central ghat on the Yamuna, where the evening aarti is performed and from which the twenty-five-ghat circuit of the city is walked.
Vrindavan's most-visited temple, built in 1864 around an image associated with Swami Haridas. A curtain is drawn across the image every few minutes, on the belief that an unbroken gaze is more than a devotee can bear.
A dense grove of low intertwined tulsi-like trees where Swami Haridas lived. It is emptied of people at dusk and locked, on the belief that the divine couple dances there at night.
The sixteenth-century foundations of the Gaudiya and Radhavallabhi lines. Govind Dev, built in 1590 with Man Singh's patronage, is the architectural high point — a cruciform, vaulted red-sandstone temple unlike anything else in north India.
A 21-km circuit around a low sandstone ridge, walked barefoot, and by some pilgrims by prostration over several days. The hill itself is worshipped; devotees do not climb it.
Twin tanks regarded in Gaudiya theology as the holiest ground in Braj. The midnight bath at Ahoi Ashtami draws enormous crowds.
Radha's and Krishna's villages, each on a hill, each with a temple at the top and a long stone stair. Between them they hold the Lathmar Holi, on consecutive days, in that order.
The infancy sites east of the Yamuna, and the Dauji temple at Baldeo dedicated to Krishna's elder brother, where the Huranga Holi is played the day after the main festival.
The Jat rulers' eighteenth-century garden palace, built around a monsoon-simulating water system with hundreds of fountains fed from two reservoirs. They are run a few days a year, and it is worth timing a visit for.
A man-made wetland created as a duck shoot by the Bharatpur rulers, now a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the densest concentrations of wintering waterbirds in Asia.
Best time: November–February.
A line of more than a hundred Shiva temples along a bend of the Yamuna, with a large cattle and horse fair each Kartik — the region's Shaiva counterweight.
The single best collection of Kushan-period Mathura sculpture, including the red sandstone Buddha images made when the Buddha first began to be shown in human form.
Eighteenth-century sandstone tanks and cenotaphs built by the Bharatpur Jats on the Govardhan circuit — the finest secular architecture in Braj.
Places worth visiting in Braj — heritage sites, wildlife, pilgrimage and landscape, with the best time to go. (14)