Orchha
There are places in India that the guidebooks mention briefly — a paragraph, maybe two — before steering you back toward the Golden Triangle. Orchha is one of them. A UNESCO-nominated medieval fort town in the heart of Madhya Pradesh, where vultures nest in royal cenotaphs, Nilgai roam the forest beyond the palace walls, and a 16th-century poet once outmanoeuvred a Mughal emperor with a single couplet. This is hidden India at its most complete — and almost no one else is here.