Tours to Mandu, Madhya Pradesh

Dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Mandu’s evocative ruins are all that remains of a Muslim capital which flourished on this far-flung plateau above the Narmada Valley in the era before the rise of the Mughals. The scores of cracked tombs, dilapidated palaces and pleasure pavilions scattered across the rocky terrain barely hint at the sybaritic lifestyles led by the Sultans who ruled from here, one of whom – Gyath Shah (1469–1500) – is said to have boasted a harem of 15,000 courtesans, protected by a bodyguard of 1,000 Abyssinian women.