Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar is two cities. One is the planned capital laid out after 1948, with wide roads, ministries and a new airport. The other is the old Ekamra Kshetra around the Bindu Sagar tank, where hundreds of stone temples were raised between roughly the seventh and thirteenth centuries — so many that Odisha's temple architecture can be read here like a textbook, chapter by chapter.

The story goes back further still. On the plain below Dhauli hill, in about 261 BCE, Ashoka fought the Kalinga war, and the slaughter turned him towards Buddhism. His edicts are cut into the rock there, beside an elephant carved emerging from the stone. A Japanese-built Peace Pagoda now stands on the hilltop above them.

The great temple is the Lingaraj, its eleventh-century spire rising some 55 metres over a compound of smaller shrines. It is closed to non-Hindus, who see it from a viewing platform outside the north wall. The smaller temples are open to all, and they are the better lesson: the Mukteswar, with its carved arched gateway, and the Rajarani, which has no deity at all and is named for the red-gold sandstone it is built from. West of town, the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves were cut for Jain monks in the first and second centuries BCE.

Odia food is gentle and quietly brilliant. Dalma — lentils cooked with vegetables — is the everyday centre of the plate; pakhala, fermented rice in water, is how the state survives the summer. Dahi bara aloo dum is the street breakfast, and chhena poda, cheese baked until its sugar caramelises, is the sweet every Odia will tell you to try.

Start at the caves early — the rock heats up by ten and the monkeys get bolder as the day goes on. See the small temples before the Lingaraj, so you know what you are looking at when you reach the big one. Drive the 15 km out to Hirapur, where the Chausath Yogini temple is a roofless circle of sixty-four carved goddesses in a village field. And go to the State Tribal Museum before you buy any Dhokra brass: you will know what good work looks like.

Many of these are living temples, not ruins. Leave shoes and leather where asked, keep cameras down inside sanctums, and accept that some doors are closed to you. At the caves, stay off the carved verandahs' edges and do not feed the monkeys. Buy crafts at Ekamra Haat or from artisans directly so the margin reaches the makers.

Bhubaneswar is one corner of a triangle. Puri, an hour south-east on the coast, is where the temple tradition is most alive — Jagannath's city, with Konark's Sun Temple and Chilika Lake within a day's reach.