IN · Curated travel guide
Taj Mahal, Ajanta Caves, Agra Fort and 7 more — what each one is, and why it is worth the detour.
Chosen from everything Wikidata knows about India and ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions describe them, which is about as close to "famous" as open data gets. 8 are on UNESCO's World Heritage list.
World Heritage
Marble mausoleum in Agra, India
A mausoleum of ivory-white marble on the right bank of the Yamuna river in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor, commissioned it in 1631 for the tomb of his late wife, Mumtaz Mahal; his own tomb is there too.
Photo: Taj_Mahal,_Agra,_India_edit2.jpg : Yann ; edited by King of Hearts derivative work: Jbarta ( talk ), CC BY-SA 3.0
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World Heritage
Buddhist cave monuments in Maharashtra, India
Thirty Buddhist monuments carved out of the rock as caves in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, India, made between the second century BCE and roughly 480 CE; UNESCO lists them as a World Heritage Site.
Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Soman assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 2.5
World Heritage
Historical Mughal fort in India
Also called the Red Fort of Agra (Lal-Qila) or Qila-i-Akbari, a historic fort in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. A brick fort on the site, recorded as early as 1080 and later called Badalgarh, was largely rebuilt in red sandstone by the Mughal emperor Akbar in 1565–1573.
Photo: A.Savin, FAL
World Heritage
Ancient cave temples in Maharashtra, India
A UNESCO World Heritage Site in Aurangabad, India: one of the biggest complexes of caves cut into rock anywhere, with Buddhist, Hindu and Jain caves and art from AD 600–1000.
Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0
World Heritage
Buddhist monastery and centre of learning in India
A famous Buddhist mahavihara in medieval Magadha, in eastern India, near Rajagriha, roughly 90 kilometres (56 mi) southeast of Pataliputra. It is widely seen as one of the ancient world's greatest centres of learning, and often called "the world's first residential university".
Photo: Uphogaphy, CC BY-SA 4.0
World Heritage
Minaret in the Mehrauli area of Delhi, India
Also spelled Qutub Minar and Qutab Minar, a minaret and victory tower from the Delhi sultanate, part of the Qutb complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Mehrauli, South Delhi, India. Mostly built from 1199 to 1220, it has 399 steps and is one of Delhi's most visited heritage sites.
Photo: Akbarzoda, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Sikh religious site in Punjab, India
A gurdwara in Amritsar, Punjab, India, the foremost spiritual site of Sikhism and its holiest place.
Photo: This picture has been taken by Oleg Yunakov . Contact e-mail: yunakov gmail.com . Image can be used in accordance with…, CC BY-SA 3.0
World Heritage
Mausoleum in Delhi, India
The Mughal Emperor Humayun's burial place in Delhi, India. Empress Bega Begum, his first wife and chief consort, ordered it in 1558 and paid for it, picking its designers herself: Mirak Mirza Ghiyas, a Persian architect, and his son, Sayyid Muhammad.
Photo: Anshrastogi1, CC0
World Heritage
Buddhist temple in Bodh Gaya, India
Also called the Mahābodhi Mahāvihāra, a restored Buddhist temple in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, India, marking where, Buddhists believe, the Buddha reached enlightenment. The site, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has a tree thought to descend from the Bodhi Tree under which he was enlightened, and it has drawn Buddhist pilgrims for over two thousand years.
Photo: Bpilgrim, CC BY-SA 2.5
Plateau in India
Also called the Peninsular Plateau, a plateau covering 422,000 km² (163,000 sq mi) in the south of the Indian subcontinent. It makes up most of the Deccan Peninsula, running from the Vindhya and Satpura ranges in the north to the northern edge of Tamil Nadu in the south.
Photo: Zeman, CC BY-SA 3.0
Officially the Republic of India, a South Asian country, seventh in the world by area and first by population. The Bay of Bengal lies to its southeast, the Indian Ocean to its south and the Arabian Sea to its southwest. On land it borders Pakistan in the west, Bhutan, Nepal and China in the north, and Myanmar and Bangladesh in the east.
Officially The Republic of India. Known locally as Bharôt ভাৰত, Bharôt ভারত, India, Bhārat ભારત, Bhārat भारत, Bhārata ಭಾರತ, Bhārat भारत, Bhāratam ഭാരതം, Bhārat भारत, Bhārat भारत, Bharôtô ଭାରତ, Bhārat ਭਾਰਤ, Bhāratam भारतम्, Bārata பாரதம், Bhāratadēsam భారత దేశం.
Based on the Wikipedia article, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0: the facts are Wikipedia's, the wording is this site's.
This guide lists 10: Taj Mahal, Ajanta Caves, Agra Fort and Ellora Caves and others. Taj Mahal, Ajanta Caves, Agra Fort, Ellora Caves, Nalanda mahavihara, Qutb Minar, Humayun's tomb and Mahabodhi Temple are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
By machine, from open data, with no human ranking them and nobody able to pay for a place on the list. Everything Wikidata records in India that is a building, a landform, a protected area or a tourist attraction, has coordinates, a photograph and an English Wikipedia article, is ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions wrote about it. Provinces, cities, airports, stations and stretches of sea shared with the neighbours are filtered out.
8 of the 10 in this guide: Taj Mahal, Ajanta Caves, Agra Fort, Ellora Caves, Nalanda mahavihara, Qutb Minar, Humayun's tomb and Mahabodhi Temple. That is not the full count for India, only the listed sites that made this guide.
Assamese, Bengali, English, Hindi, Kannada, Konkai, Malayalam, Marthi, Nepalese, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu. The currency is INR.
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