Champaner-Pavagadh from Vadodara

Champaner-Pavagadh Archaeological Park lies about 49 km north-east of Vadodara, an easy 75-minute drive through Halol, and roughly 150 km from Ahmedabad. UNESCO inscribed it in 2004 as the only complete and unchanged Islamic pre-Mughal city in India, and the description is apt: when Sultan Mahmud Begada took the hill fortress in 1484 he rebuilt Champaner at its foot as the Gujarat Sultanate capital, then the court moved back to Ahmedabad within a century and the city was simply left. What remains is a landscape rather than a monument - mosques, gateways, walls, tanks, stepwells and granaries scattered across several kilometres of farmland and scrub beneath the hill. The centrepiece is Jami Masjid, completed around 1513, with a grand carved entrance porch, two tall fluted minarets and a forest of 172 pillars inside, a building where the Gujarati temple tradition of carving has been turned wholly to Islamic ends. The Kevda Masjid, Nagina Masjid and Lila Gumbaj ki Masjid repeat the theme on a smaller scale, each with its own cenotaph or tank. Above it all rises Pavagadh, a volcanic plug close to 800 metres high that carries far older fortifications and, at the summit, the Kalika Mata temple - one of the most visited Shakti shrines in Gujarat and the reason the site draws enormous pilgrim crowds at weekends and during Navratri. A ropeway covers most of the ascent, with a last stretch of steps and a lane of stalls to the shrine. Because the monuments are spread out, keeping the car between clusters is far more practical than walking the whole park. October to March is the comfortable season; the monsoon turns the hill green and dramatic but makes the steps slippery. Allow a full day to do both the ruined city and the summit justice.