Gujarat

Gujarat gets a fraction of Rajasthan’s visitors and rewards the people who bother. The Little Rann holds khur, the Indian wild ass, running across cracked salt; the Great Rann is white and flat to the horizon, and best on the nights either side of a full moon. Gir’s lions number around 670 and exist nowhere else in the wild. Craft is the other reason to come: Ajrakh block printing at Ajrakhpur, Rabari mirror embroidery in the Banni villages, double-ikat patola in Patan, where one sari takes months. Rani ki Vav, eleven storeys down and lined with carved figures, is the finest stepwell in India. The state is dry, so the wine list is water.