Agra, Varanasi & Central India

The Ganges plain has been the political core of northern India since the kingdoms of the Buddha's time. Siddhartha Gautama gave his first sermon at Sarnath near Varanasi and died at Kushinagar, and the emperor Ashoka marked both places with pillars; the lion capital from Sarnath is India's national emblem. In the centre, the Satavahanas and later the Guptas held the Malwa plateau, and Ashoka's great stupa at Sanchi survives near Bhopal. The Chandelas built Khajuraho's temples in the 10th and 11th centuries.

The Delhi Sultanate and then the Mughals ruled from the plain: Akbar made Agra his capital, built Fatehpur Sikri, and his grandson Shah Jahan raised the Taj Mahal in the mid-17th century. Hindu Rajput and Bundela kingdoms — the Bundelas at Orchha, the Tomars and later the Scindias at Gwalior — held the hills to the south. As the Mughals declined, the Nawabs of Awadh made Lucknow a lavish Shia court in the 18th century.

The rebellion of 1857 began at Meerut and was fought hardest here, with long sieges at Lucknow and Kanpur and the rani of Jhansi killed in battle. Under the British the region was the United Provinces and the Central Provinces, and it gave the independence movement many of its leaders, including the Nehrus of Allahabad. Uttar Pradesh has since dominated national politics, and Madhya Pradesh, reorganised in 1956, lost Chhattisgarh as a separate state in 2000. The 1984 gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal killed thousands of people, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in 1992 led to a Ram temple consecrated there in 2024.

This is the Hindi belt, where Hindi in its local forms — Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Bundeli and Braj — is spoken, and Urdu survives strongly among Muslims in Lucknow and western Uttar Pradesh. It is the landscape of the Ramayana and of Krishna's childhood at Mathura and Vrindavan, and it holds India's greatest pilgrimages: the Kumbh Mela at Prayagraj, where the Ganges and Yamuna meet, and at Ujjain on the Shipra, and Varanasi, where dying and being cremated beside the Ganges is believed to bring liberation.

Lucknow prizes tehzeeb, a refined courtesy inherited from the Nawabi court, along with Urdu poetry, Kathak dance and chikankari, white embroidery on fine cotton. Varanasi weaves Banarasi silk saris with gold brocade and is a centre of Hindustani classical music and Sanskrit learning; the poets Kabir and Tulsidas lived there. Holi is celebrated with particular force in the Braj country around Mathura, where women playfully beat men with sticks in Barsana's Lathmar Holi.

Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have large Adivasi, or tribal, populations — Gond, Bhil, Baiga and others — whose painting, dance and metalwork, such as Bastar's dhokra brass casting, differ sharply from the plains' traditions. Bastar's Dussehra centres on the local goddess Danteswari.

Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state, with well over 200 million people — more than most countries. Lucknow, the capital, and Kanpur each have around three million people in their urban areas; Agra, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Meerut and Ghaziabad on the edge of Delhi are the other big cities. Most people still live in villages, farming sugar cane, wheat and rice, and the east of the state sends millions of migrant workers to Delhi, Mumbai and the Gulf.

Madhya Pradesh has more than 72 million people and a quieter, more rural feel. Indore, the commercial capital with over two million, has repeatedly been ranked India's cleanest city; Bhopal, the capital, is known as the city of lakes. Chhattisgarh, with about 30 million, lives from rice, coal, iron ore and steel — the Bhilai plant, built with Soviet help, is one of India's largest — and has long been the centre of the Maoist insurgency in its southern forests.

Days in Varanasi begin before dawn with bathers and prayers on the ghats and end with the evening aarti, while Agra runs on the rhythm of the Taj's visiting hours. Religious tourism, from Ayodhya to Ujjain, is a fast-growing industry.

The plains eat wheat, lentils and milk. Lucknow's Awadhi cooking is the region's grandest: slow-cooked dum pukht dishes sealed in their pots, galouti kebab, minced meat so fine it melts, a fragrant Lucknowi biryani, nihari stew and sheermal, a saffron-sweetened bread. Western Uttar Pradesh has the Mughal kebab and korma tradition, and Agra is famous for petha, translucent candied ash gourd. Mathura's peda, a fudge of reduced milk, is offered to Krishna.

Varanasi starts the day with kachori sabzi, puffed fried bread with spiced potato, and ends it with Banarasi paan, betel leaf folded around sweet or spiced fillings. In winter the street stalls sell malaiyo, a saffron-flavoured milk froth set by the dew overnight, and at Holi thandai, a spiced milk drink sometimes laced with bhang, is drunk across the region. Lassi comes in clay cups.

Madhya Pradesh's food is simpler and famous for Indore: poha, flattened rice with onions and spices, eaten with fried jalebi for breakfast, and the Sarafa night market's snacks. Dal bafla is the Malwa cousin of Rajasthan's dal baati, and Bhopal keeps a Mughlai meat tradition. In Chhattisgarh and the tribal districts, rice dumplings, red-ant chutney called chapda in Bastar, and liquor distilled from mahua flowers are local staples.

In Agra, the Taj Mahal is best at sunrise or from Mehtab Bagh across the Yamuna; Agra Fort, the Itmad-ud-Daulah tomb and, 40 kilometres away, Akbar's abandoned capital of Fatehpur Sikri complete the Mughal set. Mathura and Vrindavan are nearby.

Further east, Varanasi's ghats run for several kilometres along the Ganges, from Assi to Dashashwamedh, where the evening aarti is held, and Manikarnika, the main cremation ghat, around the lanes of the Kashi Vishwanath temple. Sarnath lies just outside the city. Lucknow's Bara Imambara, the Rumi Darwaza gateway and the ruined British Residency recall the Nawabs and 1857; Prayagraj's Sangam and Ayodhya's temples draw pilgrims.

Madhya Pradesh holds Khajuraho's temples, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Orchha's Jahangir Mahal, Ram Raja temple and riverside chhatris. Gwalior's hilltop fort, the Buddhist stupa at Sanchi and the painted rock shelters of Bhimbetka, both UNESCO sites near Bhopal, Mandu's Afghan-era palaces, Ujjain's Mahakaleshwar temple and the island temple town of Omkareshwar on the Narmada fill the west of the state, with the hill station of Pachmarhi in the Satpura range.

The tiger parks of Bandhavgarh and Kanha lead the wildlife list, with Pench, Panna and Satpura close behind; Madhya Pradesh had the largest tiger population of any Indian state at the 2022 count. In Chhattisgarh, the Chitrakote falls on the Indravati River, a broad horseshoe of water in the Bastar forests, are often called India's Niagara.