Rajim Mela, Tribal Chhattisgarh & Odisha

Met at Delhi airport and driven to your hotel, then a full day in the city with a local guide. It starts on foot in Old Delhi, then by cycle rickshaw through the lanes of Chandni Chowk, past spice sellers, silversmiths and sweet shops, to the Jama Masjid, the great mosque Shah Jahan built in the seventeenth century.

In the afternoon, Humayun’s Tomb, the Mughal garden tomb that set the pattern for the Taj Mahal, and the Qutub Minar, the fluted sandstone tower of the first Delhi sultans, begun around 1200. The day ends at Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, the city’s best-known Sikh shrine, where the langar kitchen serves a free meal to everyone who comes, whatever their faith.

Out at first light, the best hours for wildlife, on a jeep safari in Kanha National Park with a naturalist who knows it well. You look for tigers, leopards, gaur, chital, sambar and the barasingha, and for the birds of the sal forest. No one can promise a tiger, but Kanha is one of the better places in India to look for one.

The park is closed to safaris on Wednesday afternoons, so the afternoon goes to a Baiga village near the park. The Baiga are the forest people of these hills, farmers and gatherers known for their knowledge of healing plants; you see their houses, fields and crafts, and hear how the forest shapes their year.

After breakfast, south-east of Raipur to Rajim, the Prayag of Chhattisgarh, where the Mahanadi meets the Pairi and the Sondur. For the fortnight from Maghi Purnima to Maha Shivratri, pilgrims, sadhus and families from villages all over the state come here to bathe at the confluence, and the riverbanks fill with worship, music and a great fair.

At its heart stands the Rajiv Lochan temple to Vishnu, one of the oldest in Chhattisgarh, and on an island in the riverbed the Kuleshwar Mahadev temple to Shiva. Walk the fairground and its stalls with your guide, and watch the rites along the water. Back to Raipur in the evening.

South on the Jagdalpur road into the forests of Bastar, with a long stop at Kondagaon, the craft town of the region. Its workshops cast Dhokra bell metal by the lost-wax method — each figure modelled in wax over a clay core, sealed in clay and fired, the wax melted out and the metal poured in its place, so that no two pieces are alike — and its smiths also work wrought iron and terracotta.

Later, the weekly market at Pamela, in the forest outside Jagdalpur, where villagers come to trade cattle, rice, forest produce and cloth, and to meet their friends. On to Jagdalpur, the old capital of the Bastar kings, for two nights.

Out of Jagdalpur to villages of the Bhatra, farmers of the Bastar plateau, for their houses, fields and everyday crafts. Then across the state line into Odisha and the Tuesday market at Kotpad, the meeting place of the Bhatra and their neighbours, busy with produce, forest goods, pots and cloth. Kotpad is a weaving town too, known for cotton dyed maroon and brown with the root of the aal tree.

The afternoon is a long drive east across the Koraput plateau, past terraced fields and small hill towns, and down to Rayagada on the Nagavali river, where you arrive in the evening for the night.

A full day in the hills around Onkadelli, whose Thursday market brings in the Bonda and the Gadaba. The Bonda are one of India’s most vulnerable communities, few in number and careful of their privacy; this is their market, and they come to barter and buy, not to be looked at. Stay close to your guide, keep your distance, and never photograph a Bonda man or woman without their consent.

Lunch is a traditional meal at Peta Eco Farm, then a short walk to villages of the Rana, the Paroja and the Kumbhar, the potters, whose wheels and open fires turn out the water pots and grain jars sold in the markets. Back to Jeypore.

The longest drive of the journey, broken in the hills around Puttasing, home of the Lanjia Saura, one of the oldest communities of southern Odisha. The Saura paint the walls of their houses with idital, sacred drawings of people, animals, trees, the sun and the moon, made for the ancestors and the spirits at times of illness, harvest or celebration.

If she is willing, you may sit with the village shaman — among the Saura often a woman — who speaks with the ancestors and leads the rites of healing. Then down out of the hills to the sea at Gopalpur-on-Sea, an old port turned quiet beach town, for the night.

A day on the coast. First Dhauli, above the Daya river, where the Kalinga war is said to have been fought: the Emperor Ashoka’s edicts are cut into the rock, and a white Peace Pagoda crowns the hill. Then Pipli, where every shop is hung with appliqué canopies, lanterns and umbrellas in bright cut cloth.

Then Konark, the thirteenth-century Sun Temple carved as the chariot of Surya, and along the marine drive to Puri. Only Hindus may enter the Jagannath temple, so you see it from the Grand Road, the broad avenue down which its deities ride in their chariots at the Rath Yatra. Back to Bhubaneswar.

A last morning in Bhubaneswar, at the twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri on the edge of the city. Their caves were cut into the sandstone in the first century BC, under King Kharavela of Kalinga, as shelters for Jain monks: small cells behind carved verandas, friezes of processions, dancers and elephants, and the Hathigumpha inscription, which records the king’s reign.

Then the transfer to Bhubaneswar airport and the flight to Delhi. You are met on arrival and taken to your hotel, where dinner is waiting, for a last evening and a last night in India before the flight home.