Weekend Trips

Travel mood

Quick two-day escapes

30 places

Gujarat

Shivrajpur Beach

A pristine Blue Flag-certified beach known for turquoise waters and fine white sand. It is ideal for swimming, scuba diving, and water sports.

Gujarat

Chotila Hill rises abruptly from the flat plains of the Surendranagar district in Saurashtra, a near-symmetrical cone standing about 350 metres high. It is best known as the seat of the goddess Chamunda Mata, whose hilltop shrine draws a steady stream of pilgrims who climb the long covered stairway of more than 600 stone steps to the summit.

Gujarat

Idar Hill (Idargarh)

Idar Hill, resting prominently inside the Sabarkantha district of North Gujarat, is a rugged, mountain destination, known for a topography of massive, monolithic pink granite boulders balanced on top of each other, the hill holds a historic hill fort complex known as Idargarh. Scaling the hill via a flight of over 700 stone steps leads through medieval defense gateways, ancient rock-cut water cisterns, and hidden palaces, with a raw mix of natural architecture and military heritage.

Gujarat

Kalo Dungar (Black Hill)

Kalo Dungar, or Black Hill, is the highest point in Kutch, rising about 462 metres above the desert not far from the Pakistan border. It is famous for the view from its edge, where the land drops away to the white salt flats of the Great Rann of Kutch — at its best around sunset.

Gujarat

Wilson Hills

Wilson Hills is a small hill retreat in the Dharampur area of Valsad district, set around 2,500 feet up in the Pangarbari forests — one of the few hill spots in Gujarat from which, on a clear day, you can glimpse the distant Arabian Sea. Laid out as a summer retreat by the Dharampur ruler Vijaydevji and named after a Governor of Bombay, it is known for its winding ghat roads, cliffs and seasonal waterfalls.

Gujarat

Don Hill Station

Don Hill Station is an emerging, hill village deep within the Sahyadri mountain range in the Dang district of South Gujarat. At about 1,000 metres it matches Saputara in elevation but remains entirely untouched by mass commercial commercialization. The destination is a rustic, eco-tourism landscape enveloped by dense bamboo forests, steep valley drop-offs, and small mountain streams. It is inhabited by a small indigenous tribal community, with an authentic rural escape characterized by clean mountain air and rich bio-diversity.

Gujarat

Valsad

Valsad, once known as Bulsar, sits at the southern tip of Gujarat on the Arabian Sea. It is known for its mango orchards — the source of much of the region's Alphonso (Hafoos) crop — and mixes an industrial economy with easygoing coastal and temple tourism. With black-sand beaches and the union territory of Daman close by, it is a popular weekend break for visitors from Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Gujarat

Navsari

Navsari is an old town near the Purna river delta in south Gujarat, long linked with neighbouring Surat. It is an important centre of Parsi heritage in India, home to some of the community's oldest fire temples. Just offshore is Dandi, where Mahatma Gandhi ended his Salt March in 1930.

Gujarat

Gondal

Gondal is a preserved, sophisticated royal heritage town in the Rajkot district of Saurashtra. Historically operating as a prominent first-class princely state ruled by the progressive and visionary Jadeja Rajput dynasty, Gondal is celebrated across India for its advanced 19th-century urban planning, classical school architectures, grand riverside palaces, and private institutional collections of functional vintage automobiles.

Gujarat

Mehsana

Mehsana is a busy city in northern Gujarat, known for the Dudhsagar dairy — one of India's largest cooperative dairies — and for its oil and gas fields. For travellers it is most useful as a base for the Solanki-era Sun Temple at Modhera and the Bahucharaji Shakti Peeth temple nearby.

Gujarat

Dakor

Dakor is a temple town in the Kheda district of central Gujarat, built around the Ranchhodraiji Temple and the stone-stepped Gomti Lake. Its Krishna deity is one of the region's most revered; local legend says the image came from Dwarka out of love for a devotee named Bodana. The town is busiest on full-moon days, when large crowds gather for prayers.

Gujarat

Bhavnagar

Bhavnagar is a historic oceanfront city founded in 1723 by Maharaja Bhavsinhji Gohil, strategically positioned along the western rim of the Gulf of Khambhat. Long serving as a major maritime trading capital exporting rich regional goods, the city has evolved into a base for corporate and heritage travelers. Its urban landscape features grand colonial architectures, public squares, and unique hilltop temples with panoramic vistas over active industrial shipping lock gates, while functioning as the primary transit gateway for the world-famous Velavadar Blackbuck savanna ecosystems.

Gujarat

Gandhinagar

Gandhinagar, the meticulously master-planned capital city of Gujarat, stands on the west bank of the Sabarmati River. Designed by visionary architects H.K. Mewada and Prakash M. Apte, it is internationally recognized as one of India's greenest administrative capitals, laid out in an orderly grid of 30 structured sectors. Beyond its primary role as a political and bureaucratic powerhouse, Gandhinagar handles a massive leisure and spiritual tourist footprint due to its high-capacity exhibition facilities, lush urban forest canopy covers, eco-nature parks, and monumental temple installations.

Gujarat

Saputara

Saputara is Gujarat's only hill station, which makes it modest by Himalayan standards and genuinely useful if you are anywhere near Surat or Ahmedabad. It sits at about a thousand metres in the Dang forests near the Maharashtra border. The lake at the centre is the focus — boating, a promenade, and a ropeway up to the sunset point. None of it is dramatic. What is good is the drive in through the Sahyadri forest, the Gira waterfall after the monsoon, and the tribal museum, which is small and better than it needs to be. The monsoon and the weeks just after it are when this place justifies itself. The Saputara Monsoon Festival runs through those months, the forest is fully green and the waterfalls are actually falling. By March the hills have gone brown and the lake is low. Set your expectations to a cool weekend in the woods rather than a mountain trip, and it holds up. Two nights is right; a week would be too long. July to November.

Gujarat

Vadodara

Universally known as the cultural capital of Gujarat, Vadodara (historically Baroda) is a grand city shaped by the royal history of the Gaekwad dynasty. It features opulent palaces, rich art academies, and vast public gardens, with an eloquent mix of old-world royalty and modern industrial enterprise.

Gujarat

Ahmedabad

Ahmedabad's old city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the way to see it is a walk that starts at seven in the morning. The heritage walk from Swaminarayan temple to Jama Masjid takes a couple of hours and goes through the pols — dense residential quarters, each historically one community, with shared courtyards, carved wooden facades and bird feeders on tall poles. Doing this without a guide means missing all of it, because the pols look like ordinary lanes from outside. The Sidi Saiyyed mosque's stone jaali — the tree-of-life screen — is the image the city is known for, and it takes five minutes to see. The Adalaj stepwell, half an hour out, takes longer and gives more. Gandhi's Sabarmati Ashram is plain and unglamorous by design. Sit in it for a while rather than walking through. Gujarat is a dry state; alcohol is not served. The city eats vegetarian extremely well as a result — the Gujarati thali here is one of India's great meals. November to February. April and May routinely pass forty-two degrees.

Gujarat

Kevadia (Ekta Nagar)

Kevadia, now officially Ekta Nagar, is home to the Statue of Unity — at 182 metres, the tallest statue in the world — on the banks of the Narmada River. Once a quiet settlement, it has been developed into a large tourism hub with theme gardens, a safari park, viewpoints and adventure activities.

Maharashtra

Mumbai

Mumbai runs on its trains, and the fastest way to stop being a tourist here is to work out which line you need and get on it. The stretch people photograph without knowing what it is runs from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus down to Oval Maidan: Victorian Gothic on one side, Art Deco on the other, facing each other across the park. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it is best walked at seven in the morning when the light is low and the traffic has not started. Skip the crush at the Gateway of India unless you are taking the ferry to Elephanta, which is worth a half day for the rock-cut Shiva in cave one. Instead go to Banganga tank in Walkeshwar — a stepped water tank in the middle of the richest neighbourhood in India, almost always empty of visitors. Monsoon, June to September, is when the city is most itself and most difficult. The rain is genuinely heavy, the trains flood, and locals will tell you both that it is beautiful and that they dread it. Both are true. November to February is the easy window.

Kerala

Kovalam Beach

Kerala's most famous beach resort, Kovalam is known for its crescent Lighthouse Beach, ayurvedic spas, seafood shacks and gentle swimming bays near Trivandrum. The best months to visit are roughly November to February, when seas are calm and skies are clear; the monsoon (June to September) brings rough water and many beach shacks shut. Plan water sports and swimming for the dry winter window.

Madhya Pradesh

Gwalior

Gwalior's fort sits on a sandstone plateau above the city and is one of the least visited great forts in India, which is most of its appeal. The approach past the Siddhachal Jain caves is what to slow down for: colossal Jain figures cut directly into the cliff face on the way up, the largest of them close to twenty metres. Then Man Singh Palace at the top, with turquoise tilework of ducks and elephants on the outer wall, and interiors you can walk through without a crowd. The Sas Bahu temples on the eastern edge are eleventh century and finely carved. Teli ka Mandir, unusually tall and shaped like nothing else on the site, is worth walking to. Gwalior is also a music city — the Gwalior gharana is one of the oldest surviving Hindustani classical traditions, and Tansen is buried here. The Tansen festival in December is when you would hear it properly. October to March. The fort is a long exposed climb with very little shade, so this matters more than usual.

Nagaland

Kohima

Kohima's war cemetery is the most affecting war memorial in India, and most people who come for the Hornbill Festival never walk up to it. In 1944 the Japanese advance into India was stopped here, on a tennis court on the ridge above town. The court's markings are still laid out in stone among the graves. The inscription at the base — the one about telling those at home that we gave our today for their tomorrow — is worth the climb on its own. The Hornbill Festival runs the first ten days of December at Kisama, a purpose-built village of tribal morungs where all the Naga groups perform. It is worth seeing and it is also a festival built for visitors; if you want the everyday version of Naga life you will find more of it in the villages around Khonoma, an hour away, than at Kisama. Nagaland requires an Inner Line Permit for Indian nationals; foreign nationals need to register on arrival. Sort it in advance. October to May is dry. December means Hornbill, full hotels and prices to match — book months ahead or stay in Dimapur and travel up.

Rajasthan

Jodhpur

Mehrangarh is the best fort in India, and if you only climb one in Rajasthan it should be this one. It sits on a cliff a hundred and twenty metres above the city with no gap between rock and wall — the masonry simply continues the escarpment. The audio guide is one of the few in the country genuinely worth taking. Look for the handprints beside Loha Pol, left by royal widows on their way to the pyre. About the blue: people arrive expecting an entirely blue city and find a mostly ochre one. The blue is real but it is concentrated in the Brahmpuri quarter below the fort's north-east wall, and the way to see it is from the ramparts looking down, or by walking those specific lanes. Anywhere else in Jodhpur you will wonder what you were promised. Toorji ka Jhalra, the restored stepwell in the old city, is where everyone goes at sunset now and it has the cafés to prove it. Rao Jodha desert rock park, just outside the fort gates, has almost nobody in it and is the better hour. October to early March. By May the afternoon heat here is not a discomfort, it is a hazard.

Sikkim

Gangtok

Gangtok is where most Sikkim trips begin, and its real value is as a base rather than a destination. The town itself is a steep ridge of concrete with one pleasant pedestrian street, MG Marg, where no vehicles and no spitting are allowed and the whole town walks in the evening. Rumtek monastery, half an hour out, is the seat of the Karma Kagyu lineage and the more worthwhile hour. Enchey, closer in, is quieter still. Tsomgo lake and Nathu La are the standard day trip. Both need permits arranged through a registered operator in Gangtok, both are high — Tsomgo is at around 3,700 metres — and Nathu La is closed to foreign nationals entirely. If you have only been in the hills a day, that altitude gain in a single drive is a lot. For actual Sikkim, keep going. Pelling for the Kanchenjunga view, Yuksom for the walking, north Sikkim for Lachung and the Yumthang valley — all of which need their own permits. March to May and October to early December. The monsoon here brings serious landslides and roads close for days at a time.

Kerala

Alleppey (Backwaters)

The mistake in Alleppey is the day boat. A houseboat only becomes worth it once the day-trippers have gone home and the water goes quiet. Book an overnight, and if you can, book a smaller boat that can leave the main channel. The big two-storey ones are restricted to the wide canals where they queue up alongside each other; the small ones get into the narrow waterways between the paddy fields, which is where the backwaters stop being a boat trip and start being a place where people live. Better still, spend a morning on a public ferry. The government service from Alleppey to Kottayam costs almost nothing, takes a couple of hours, stops at village jetties, and carries schoolchildren and shopping. You will see more of the actual backwaters from its deck than from most houseboats. The paddy fields here are farmed below sea level, kept dry by dykes and pumps — Kuttanad is one of the few places in the world where that is done. October to March. The monsoon has its own case, and the snake boat races in the wet season are worth planning around, but the water is high and the light is grey.

Karnataka

Mysuru (Mysore Palace)

Mysuru is a small, orderly, easy city, and it has the one palace in India that is worth seeing lit up. Mysore Palace switches its exterior lights on for a short window on Sunday evenings and through Dasara — around a hundred thousand bulbs on the outline of the building. Check the current timings locally, because they change, and be there before it happens rather than after. Inside, the Durbar Hall and the marriage pavilion are the rooms to slow down in. Photography is not allowed in the interior and shoes come off at the entrance. Chamundi Hill above the city is the standard sunset trip. The steps up — around a thousand of them — are a better way to arrive than the road, and the Nandi bull two-thirds of the way up is the reason to walk rather than drive. Devaraja Market is the working market: flowers by the kilo, sandalwood, bananas in a dozen varieties. Go in the morning while it is being restocked. Dasara in September or October is the city at full volume, with a caparisoned elephant procession. It is also when every room is booked. October to February otherwise.

Uttar Pradesh

Lucknow

Lucknow is a food city that happens to have beautiful ruins, and treating it the other way round is how visitors leave underwhelmed. Eat first. The galouti kebab was supposedly made for a Nawab who had lost his teeth, and the good places in Chowk have been doing one thing for four or five generations. Sheermal, nihari with kulcha in the early morning, and the Awadhi biryani which is milder and more perfumed than Hyderabad's — that is the argument between the two cities and you should form your own view. The Bara Imambara's bhulbhulaiya is a genuine labyrinth in the walls of the building and you do need the official guide, not because of the ticket but because people get properly lost. The Residency, shelled during the 1857 siege and left exactly as it was, is the most atmospheric place in the city and usually empty. Chikan embroidery is from here. Buy it in Chowk, not at the airport. October to March. May and June are brutally hot.

Rajasthan

Udaipur

Udaipur, the 'City of Lakes', sits among the green Aravalli Hills, built around a chain of interconnected lakes created over the centuries for water and defence. The largest, Lake Pichola, is the visual centre of the city, its shores lined with white marble palaces, bathing ghats and lakefront hotels. The grandest is the City Palace, which is really eleven palaces built against each other over four centuries by successive maharanas — which is why the inside is a maze of levels and courtyards rather than a single plan. Udaipur has a noticeably slower pace than Rajasthan's other big cities. In bad drought years Pichola has emptied completely, so if the lake is the reason you are coming, check before you book.

Andaman & Nicobar Islands

Corbyn's Cove (Port Blair)

The closest beach to Port Blair, Corbyn's Cove is a coconut-palm-fringed crescent popular for a quick swim, water sports and easy island access. The best months to visit are roughly November to February, when seas are calm and skies are clear; the monsoon (June to September) brings rough water and many beach shacks shut. Plan water sports and swimming for the dry winter window.

Puducherry

Pondicherry (Puducherry)

Pondicherry's French quarter is about six streets deep, and knowing that in advance saves the disappointment of expecting a French town. What is there is genuinely good: ochre walls, bougainvillea, shuttered colonial houses, and a seafront promenade that closes to traffic in the evening and fills with the whole town walking. The Tamil quarter across the canal is larger, older and rarely visited, and the two architectural traditions meeting along that line is the actual interest of the place. The beach in Pondicherry town is rock, not sand. People arrive expecting to swim and cannot. For sand you go north to Auroville's beaches or south towards Chunnambar. Auroville, twenty minutes out, is a serious experiment in communal living rather than an attraction. Visitors can see the Matrimandir from a viewing point; going inside needs booking days ahead and is not casual. October to March. April and May are hot and humid, and the north-east monsoon in October and November brings real rain.

Maharashtra

Mahabaleshwar

Mahabaleshwar is a high-altitude hill station at an elevation of 1,353 metres on an expansive plateau ridge of the Sahyadri mountain range in Satara district. Enveloped by dense evergreen forests, steep river canyons, and agricultural terraced fields, it stands as the highest and most expansive mountain resort in Maharashtra. The town features an old-world colonial character, distinct multi-tiered valley viewing points like Arthur's Seat, and the scenic artificial Venna Lake. The surrounding fertile soils are internationally famous for high-yield commercial fruit farming, producing nearly 85 percent of the country's strawberries.