Mathura

Mathura was a great city long before it was a pilgrim town — a trading post on the road between the Gangetic plain and the north-west, and in the first centuries CE a capital of the Kushan empire. Its workshops of red-spotted sandstone produced some of the earliest images of the Buddha in human form, along with Jain and Hindu figures that were carried across northern India.

But for most of the people who come here, the city's story is a single night: Krishna's birth in a prison cell, to a mother held captive by the tyrant Kansa, and his father carrying the newborn across the flooded Yamuna to safety. The Krishna Janmabhoomi temple complex marks the spot believed to be that cell. On Janmashtami, the city stays awake until midnight to celebrate the birth again.

Mathura is the centre of Braj, the countryside of Krishna's childhood, and the region's culture is devotional, rural and rich in dairy. Vishram Ghat, where Krishna is said to have rested after killing Kansa, hosts an evening aarti with lamps floated on the Yamuna. The Dwarkadhish temple in the old bazaar, built in 1814, is the busiest in town, and the Government Museum holds the city's sculpture — one of the finest collections in India, and almost always quiet.

Holi here is not a day but a season. In the week before the full moon, women in Barsana and Nandgaon beat the men of the neighbouring village with sticks in the Lathmar Holi, and the colour spreads village by village until the festival itself. The food is milk in every form: Mathura peda, browned and grainy; khurchan scraped from simmering pans; bedai with aloo sabzi at breakfast; lassi heavy enough to stand a spoon in.

Phones, cameras and bags are not allowed inside the Janmabhoomi complex; leave them in the car or the lockers. Visit the museum in the morning before the old city heats up. If you are coming for Lathmar Holi, go with a local guide, keep valuables at the hotel and wear clothes you will not want back — the play is rough and the crowds enormous, and women travellers in particular should go with a group. The Govardhan parikrama is about 21 km; many pilgrims walk it barefoot, often through the night.

Mathura is a pilgrimage city before it is a tourist one. Dress modestly, take your shoes off where others do, and keep your camera down during aarti. The Yamuna here carries a great deal of the capital's waste; do not add to it, and decline the plastic-packed offerings sold at the ghats.

Mathura is the birth; Vrindavan, twenty minutes north, is the childhood. Its lanes of temples, kirtan and widows chanting at dawn are where Braj devotion is at its most intense.