Visakhapatnam

Visakhapatnam — Vizag to almost everyone — is a deep natural harbour tucked behind a headland called the Dolphin's Nose, with the Eastern Ghats rising directly behind the city. It has been a port for a very long time. On the hills to the north, Buddhist monks built monasteries at Thotlakonda and Bavikonda more than two thousand years ago, overlooking the sea routes to Southeast Asia, and their stupas and cells still sit in the scrub.

Today it is a navy city. The Eastern Naval Command is headquartered here, and the city's most popular museum is a submarine: INS Kursura, which served from 1969 to 2001 and now sits on dry land on RK Beach, its narrow passages as cramped as they ever were. In December the navy puts on displays off the beach for Navy Day, and the whole city turns up to watch.

Vizag eats like coastal Andhra — hot, sour and generous. Gongura, the tart sorrel leaf, goes into pickles and mutton curries; royyala iguru, prawns in a thick red masala, is the seafood dish to order; pesarattu, a green-gram dosa, is breakfast. Pootharekulu, paper-thin rice sheets folded round sugar and ghee, come from the Godavari villages to the south and are sold everywhere. Up in the Araku hills, the tribal farmers grow coffee that now carries a GI tag, and at the roadside they cook bamboo chicken in a hollow stem over coals.

Faith is concentrated on Simhachalam, the hill temple of Varaha Lakshmi Narasimha north of the city. For most of the year the deity is covered in sandalwood paste; at Chandanotsavam, in April or May, it is removed for a single day and devotees queue through the night for the sight.

Take the train up to Araku and a car back down. The morning train climbs through dozens of tunnels and gorges in the Eastern Ghats, and its glass-roofed vistadome coaches sell out early, so book well ahead. Stop at Borra Caves on the way down — a limestone cavern lit in coloured lights, which you can forgive once you see the size of it. In the city, Yarada beach beyond the harbour is quieter than RK Beach. Ride the ropeway to Kailasagiri late in the afternoon for the view along the coast, and walk Thotlakonda in the early morning before the heat.

Olive Ridley turtles nest on the beaches around Vizag between roughly January and March; if you see hatchlings or marked nests, keep lights off and give them space. In Araku, buy coffee, honey and crafts from tribal cooperatives rather than roadside resellers. The Buddhist sites are fragile and lightly guarded — don't climb the stupas — and keep the hill roads clean of plastic.

Vizag is the start of a long coast road north. Puri, a day's journey up the Bay of Bengal into Odisha, is its counterpoint — another temple town on the sea, and the home of Jagannath.