Vrindavan

Vrindavan means the forest of tulsi, and in the stories it is where Krishna grew up among the cowherds — stealing butter, playing the flute, dancing with Radha and the gopis on moonlit nights by the Yamuna. For centuries it was a forest and a few villages. Then, in the early sixteenth century, the Bengali saint Chaitanya came looking for the places of Krishna's childhood, and his followers, the Goswamis, stayed to find them, build temples over them and write the theology that still shapes devotion here.

Their patrons were Rajput nobles and Mughal-era courtiers, and the red sandstone temples of Govind Dev and Madan Mohan date from that time. Since then the town has kept growing, one temple at a time, until there are said to be thousands — from family shrines in courtyards to the marble Prem Mandir, opened in 2012 and lit every evening like a stage set.

Vrindavan's sound is kirtan: the names of Radha and Krishna sung in temples, ashrams and lanes from before dawn to late at night. At Banke Bihari, the town's most beloved temple, the image is screened by a curtain that is drawn and opened every few minutes during darshan — the god's gaze, it is said, is too powerful to bear for long. At ISKCON's Krishna Balaram Mandir, founded in the 1970s, the kirtan is in a dozen languages. Nidhivan, a walled grove of twisted trees, is locked at dusk because, it is believed, Krishna still dances there at night.

The town is also a refuge for widows, many from Bengal, who come to spend their last years singing bhajans in the ashrams. Food is vegetarian, rich and sweet: kachori and jalebi for breakfast, the Vrindavan peda, rabri, and thalis of temple prasadam.

The monkeys here are expert thieves — take off your glasses and put away your phone before you walk the lanes, and do not fight one for anything. Banke Bihari can be dangerously crowded on weekends and festivals; go on a weekday morning and keep children close. See Prem Mandir after dark, when it is lit. Walk part of the parikrama, the circuit around the town, at dawn. And check temple timings on the day: they change with the seasons and the festival calendar.

Vrindavan is a place of intense devotion; dress modestly, remove shoes before temples, and keep your camera away from worshippers and widows unless they invite you. Give to the widows' ashrams directly rather than to people collecting in the lanes. Do not feed the monkeys, and do not add plastic to the Yamuna, already one of the most polluted rivers in India.

Agra is barely an hour and a half south by the expressway, and the Taj Mahal makes a strange and wonderful companion to Vrindavan — love made into marble in one, love sung into devotion in the other.