India

India does not offer a single travel argument; it offers about fifteen, in twenty-two official languages, and the first useful planning decision is which India you are after. The Rajasthan-Mughal-fort circuit is the most-marketed and the most logistically forgiving — Delhi, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, the unhurried pace of the Aman or Taj Lake Palace at Udaipur — and it remains a genuinely good itinerary for travellers willing to slow down between cities rather than ticking through them.

The more interesting trip, for a returning traveller, is south. Kerala's backwaters, Tamil Nadu's temple cities, Karnataka's coffee uplands at Coorg and the cleaner air of the Western Ghats — this is the India where the food argument becomes inarguable, where the hotel stock is increasingly excellent (CGH Earth, Brunton Boatyard, Niraamaya, the Ana Mandara of the south coast), and where the population density that defines the north relaxes into something a long-time traveller can read. The Andaman Islands, technically Indian territory but four hours by air from Chennai, are a separate proposition entirely — a tropical-island country embedded in the national one, with the kind of reef and rainforest that has not been written about enough.

The conservation story is improving in real places. Ranthambore and Bandhavgarh remain the headline tiger reserves, but the better operators now route guests to Pench and Tadoba where the tracking is honest rather than choreographed. Suján's Sher Bagh, Taj Mahua Kothi, and Aman-i-Khás (now the smaller, lower-key successor on the eastern edge) work tiger-tourism revenue back into anti-poaching and community programmes in ways that have moved from PR to budget line.

October to March is the broad sweet spot — Delhi air notwithstanding, which is a real planning input — and the further south you go, the longer the season holds. The Andamans run December through April; Kerala into early May. Avoid the May heat in the north and the June-September monsoon almost everywhere apart from the Ghats, where it is the point.