Off beaten places visited in India

I would like to start a thread which will benefit all travellers to India who are aiming for an off beaten tourist place experience .... Reply to this

When I wanted to go off the beaten track in India, I was advised by His Dudeness, to go to Kurukshetra. I did, and here is the blog I wrote afterwards. What is wrong with Kurukshetra Reply to this

The reason for the north east to be of the beaten track is, the bureaucratic hassle of needing to get a permit, the fact that several of the states have ongoing security issues (and thus warnings in the LP and other guidebooks, which deters travellers) and plain ignorance, most people simply don't know there is more beyond Darjeeling.
Here is in short some information on them:
Assam: no permit required, some security issues in pockets of the state. Places of interest: Guwahati, Tezpur, Majuli Island, Kaziranga National Park, Sibsigar, tea estates outside Sibsigar. Encountered no problems with the security situation, except a lot of roadblocks in certain districts.
Meghalaya: no permit required, no security issues and highly recommended. Places of interest: Shillong, Mawlynnong (though the latest on the beautiful guesthouse I stayed in there and the village itself is that it has become expensive and overrun by Bengali tourists), Cherrapunjee and more...
Tripura: no permit required, some security issues. Places of interest: Bru refugee camps in northern Tripura, Agartala, Melaghar and Udaipur. Encountered no problems with security, but needed to travel in protected convoy to cross the state from north to east.
Arunachal Pradesh: permit required (only issued to groups of four people and more, and cost 50 dollars per person; it is possible to get a permit on your own, but it is difficult, takes a lot of orginizing and will cost you a minimum of 200 dollars), lenght of stay a permit allows is 10 days, and you can extend three times, no security issues. Places of interest: Bomdila, Dirang, Tawang in western Arunachal, Ziro, Daorijo, Along and Pasaram Kund in eastern Arunachal.
Nagaland: permit required (either a group of four, or a couple, permit is free), security issues. Places of interest: northern Nagaland, Mon district, Longwa, Tuensang, southern Nagaland, Kohima. Encountered no problems with the security situation, except a lot of roadblocks.
Manipur: permit required (either group of four, or a couple, permit 30 dollars and very hard to get), big security issues. Places of interest, Imphal, Loktak Lake. This is the only state I didn't manage to visit, so I can't say much about it.
Mizoram: permit required (possible for single traveller and easy to get, costs 200 rupee), no security issues. Places of interest: Aizawl, Saiha, the blue hills, Sangau. Reply to this

Some other off the beaten track places I have personally visited, per state.
Bihar, which has a few security issues, mainly a Naxalite violence in the country side. Places of the beaten track and of interest: Kesariya (reachable by train to Chakia and than a shared jeep), Vaishali, Rajgir, Nalanda and Pawapuri (all easily accesible from Patna)
Chhattisgarh, the whole state is off the beaten track. Places of interest, Jagdalpur and surroundings
Madhya Pradesh, places of interest which are slightly off the beaten track: Sanchi, Mandu, Orchha, Ujjain.
Andra Pradesh, places of interest slightly off the beaten track: Warangal, Tirupathi.
Karnataka: Places of interest off the beaten track: Bidar (highly recommended), Bijapur, Badami and Northern Karnataka as a whole has a lot of undiscovered treasures.
Tamil Nadu: Places of interest slightly off the beaten track: Chidambaram, Kumbakonam, Thanjavur, Rameswaram.
Uttar Pradesh: Places of interest slightly or totally off the beaten track: Kushinagar, Chitrakoot, Lucknow, Ayodhya, Mathura (best time to visit is during holi, come a week early and stay a few days longer and visit the surrounding villages who each have their own way of celebrating it on different days, some starting as early as one month before and the last ending a week after holi)
Gujarat: The whole state is not yet completely on the tourist radar. Places of interest include: Palitana, Vadaroda, Jamnagar, Somnath, Sasan Gir Wildlife reserve, Junagadh, Dwarka, Bhuj, Mandvi, Ahmedabad and much more...
Rajastan: Bundi and Kota, enjoy the Rajastani cities without the horde of tourists.
Maharashtra: Nasik and the coast down to Goa.
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There are great beaches along the west coast of Maharashtra which see almost no tourists - they are every bit as nice as Goa, except you can have them to yourself. Check out Tarkarli Reply to this