Ajmer

Ajmer was a Chauhan capital long before it was anything else — Taragarh, the fort on the ridge above town, is one of the oldest hill forts in Rajasthan. Then, towards the end of the twelfth century, a Sufi teacher from Sistan named Moinuddin Chishti settled at the foot of that ridge and stayed for the rest of his life. He preached that the highest form of devotion was to feed the hungry, and the city has organised itself around that idea ever since.

Emperors came barefoot. Akbar walked here from Agra more than once to give thanks for an heir; Shah Jahan built the white marble pavilions on Ana Sagar, the lake a Chauhan king had dammed a generation or two before the saint arrived. Eight hundred years on, the pilgrims are mostly ordinary families, and they come from every faith.

The Dargah Sharif is reached through a narrow bazaar that sells nothing but devotion — rose petals, embroidered chadars to lay on the tomb, sugared makhana by the kilo. Inside the courtyard sit two enormous iron degs, cauldrons in which a sweet rice of saffron, ghee and dry fruit is cooked overnight and handed out at dawn. In the evenings the qawwals sit in the open and sing the old Persian and Hindavi verses, and the crowd sways with them.

Step a few hundred metres west and the city changes register. Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra, a mosque raised in the 1190s from the pillars of earlier temples, still shows Hindu and Jain carving behind its Persian calligraphy. Soniji Ki Nasiyan, a Jain temple, keeps a hall filled with a gilded model of the Jain universe. Food follows the shrine: mutton biryani and kebabs around the dargah lanes, then sohan halwa, the dense, ghee-rich sweet that Ajmer has made for generations, and kadhi kachori for breakfast.

Go to the dargah early, around six, when the courtyard is swept and the queues are short, and come back after dark for the qawwali. Carry a scarf or handkerchief — everyone covers their head inside, men included. Leave bags at your hotel; the security check is easier without them. Khadims, the hereditary custodians, will offer to guide your offering; a modest donation is customary, but no one can make you pay for prayer. And walk up to Taragarh in the cool of the morning — the view of the city folded around its lake explains the place better than anything.

This is a working shrine, not a monument, and people around you may be at the most important moment of their year. Dress modestly, keep your camera away inside the sanctum, and buy your chadar or petals from the lane rather than an agent who meets you at the station. If you want to give, give to the langar — it feeds thousands daily, as it was meant to.

Pushkar lies fourteen kilometres away over the Nag Pahar hills — a Hindu lake town of ghats and the Brahma temple, quieter by far. Visiting both in one trip, a Sufi shrine and a Hindu tirtha within an hour of each other, is the most honest lesson in Rajasthan's faiths you can get.