Picture a golden winter morning. Fog lifts off mirror-calm water. A flock of bar-headed geese skims past at eye level; a marsh harrier quarters low over reed beds; painted storks clatter back to their nesting trees. Keoladeo National Park (formerly Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary) is that rare thing: a human-made, human-managed wetland that turned into one of the world’s great bird stages—so vital it earned UNESCO World Heritage status in 1985.

Mount Abu is Rajasthan’s cool, forested outpost—a granite island rising from desert plains, where leopards prowl, orchids bloom, and Jain temples glow white as moonlight. It’s also a walker’s paradise: a mesh of old forest paths and village trails weaving through one of India’s oldest mountain systems, the Aravalli Range.