Financial Times/by William Dalrymple

To the north of Pune lie rock-cut complexes as startling as Petra but completely overlooked by tourists.

The valley was wide and fertile, still green despite the onset of the Indian summer heat. On the horizon, the hilltops were jagged with the silhouetted crenellations of Maratha forts. Below, in the valley bottom, white oxen with blue-painted horns dragged wooden ploughs through rocky strip fields. The second harvest of the year had just been reaped, and the land was being prepared for the fallow months of blazing heat ahead.

The path, though unmarked from the Tarmac road and quite deserted, was an ancient one, rubbed into a U-shaped hollow by the footfalls of generations of pilgrims. It was a steep climb up the old path in the midday sun, and I stopped every few hundred yards to mop my brow. Mynahs hopped chattering around my feet, apparently impervious to the intense heat radiating from the walls of dark rock. Thirty minutes later, finally turning the corner of the cliff, I looked on to the great façade of the building that had drawn so many generations puffing up this hill: the elaborately sculpted portico of probably the oldest intact Buddhist monastery in the world............ [Read More] ​(The views expressed above are the personal views of writer)