From Jaipur: Abhaneri Stepwell & Bhangarh Fort Day Trip

Two places most people never get to

Both of these sit on the road east of Jaipur, and both are extraordinary in ways the postcard circuit is not. Eight hours, a private car, and a guide who can explain what you are standing in.

Chand Baori at Abhaneri

This is the deepest and most geometrically outrageous stepwell in India: 3,500 steps in perfect double flights down thirteen storeys to a square of green water at the bottom. It was cut in the 9th century by King Chanda, for a village that needed water through a desert summer.

The temperature at the bottom runs five or six degrees below the surface, which was the point — it was a place to draw water and also a place to sit out the heat. The stairs form a pattern that photographs like optical illusion, and you will have seen it in films without knowing where it was.

You cannot descend to the water. The upper gallery and the Harshat Mata temple beside it are open.

Bhangarh Fort

A complete 17th-century town — palace, market street, temples, havelis, walls — abandoned and left standing at the foot of the Aravallis.

It is famous in India as the most haunted place in the country, and the Archaeological Survey has a signboard prohibiting entry between sunset and sunrise, which is the only such sign on any ASI monument. The legends involve a sorcerer and a princess; the likelier history is famine, a shifted trade route and a dried water supply.

What you actually get is an entire deserted town you can walk through with almost nobody in it — the banyan-shaded market street, the temple plinths, the palace at the back against the hill. Go for that rather than for ghosts.

Practical

About 90 km each way, roughly eight hours door to door. Bhangarh involves real walking on uneven stone and there is little shade in the ruins. Carry water; the stalls at the gate are limited.

Private car, driver and guide included; entrance fees are small and paid on the day.