Bundelkhand

Not the temples you've been told about. Around twenty-five survive of an original eighty-odd, built by the Chandelas in a hundred-year burst and then left alone in the forest for centuries. Yes, there is erotic sculpture — it is perhaps a tenth of what is carved there, and treating it as the subject is like visiting a library for the marginalia.

What's actually on those walls is everyone: musicians, soldiers, a woman removing a thorn from her foot, a man writing a letter, elephants misbehaving. And above them the shikhara of Kandariya Mahadeva rises about thirty metres in deliberate imitation of a mountain range, because the building is an argument about where gods live. Three visits over three days, always early, with someone who can read it. The Jain temples in the eastern group get their own morning and almost nobody gives them one.

The park that lost every tiger it had, and got them back. By around 2009 Panna had none — poached out, completely. Tigers were brought in from other reserves and the population was rebuilt from effectively zero. It worked, which almost never happens, and it is the single best conservation story in India that nobody tells tourists.

And it may now be partly drowned. The Ken–Betwa river-linking project involves submerging a portion of the reserve, and the argument over it is live, bitter and unfinished. I'll put you in front of people on more than one side of it. You came for a tiger; you'll leave with an opinion about water, which is the better souvenir.

The Ken itself deserves a morning on the water — gharial on the banks, and a gorge that explains why the Chandelas had good stone.

A capital that was abandoned rather than destroyed. Founded by the Bundelas around 1531 and left largely alone since, which is why it feels less like a monument and more like a town that lost its job. Jahangir Mahal, built to receive a Mughal emperor for a visit; the Raja Mahal murals; a line of cenotaphs standing in the Betwa at Kanchana Ghat.

And the strangest thing in the zone: at Ram Raja, Ram is worshipped not as a god but as a reigning king. The idol was meant for the great Chaturbhuj temple next door and could not be moved, so the palace became the temple — and the king receives a guard of honour, with an armed salute, daily. It is the only place in the country where the state salutes a deity as a head of state. Two nights minimum. Almost nobody stays two nights.

The western group, at opening, with a historian. Before the light goes flat and before the crowd. Two hours with someone who has published on the Chandelas, who will spend the first ten minutes taking the erotica question off the table so you can look at what's actually there.

The Ken by boat. Out before eight, low and quiet, gharial on the sandbanks. Then the gorge, and the explanation of what the river link would flood, from the person you actually take people to.

Panna with someone who was there in 2009. Not a tiger hunt — a walk-through of how you rebuild a population from nothing, told by name the forester or biologist you use. If a tiger appears, and it often does, that's a bonus rather than the brief.

The cenotaphs from the Betwa. Twenty minutes of usable light, from a boat, with the chhatris between you and the sun. Then walk back through the town while it cooks its dinner.

Ram Raja, when the king is saluted. Go for the aarti and stand at the back. It is loud, crowded and entirely unstaged, and understanding what you're watching requires someone to have explained the king business first — which is why it goes on day nine and not day one.

Fly into Khajuraho. Nothing on the first afternoon but the hotel and a walk. Then two early mornings at the temples — the western group on the first, the Jain temples in the eastern group on the second — with the historian both times. Middays are free and will be hot even in December.

Under an hour to Panna, which feels like cheating. The river at dawn one day, the forest the next, the gorge and the falls on the third. An afternoon with nothing in it. This is the quietest stretch of the trip and the one people are most surprised to have loved.

The drive west to Orchha, in daylight, unhurried, stopping when something deserves it. Arrive for the late afternoon. Nothing planned that evening.

Orchha properly: the palaces early, the Betwa at dusk, Ram Raja in the evening, the murals when the light is right for them. One more empty afternoon. Out by train from Jhansi, which is a better last morning than an airport.

Bandhavgarh sits about six hours east of Khajuraho and is the natural extension — as good a chance of a tiger as anywhere in India, and an old fort on the plateau above the park that almost nobody looks up at. Fourteen nights, and a different kind of trip. Confirm whether you run this as one journey or two.