The itinerary nobody planned for her
When a Japanese traveller named Hanna spent three months moving through India on her own, she did what most guidebooks quietly discourage — she followed instinct over itinerary. She changed trains mid-journey, signed up for ten-day meditation courses, and let a chance encounter on a rocky hillside turn into a lasting friendship. The five places that stayed with her longest are a fascinating mix: ancient, green, chaotic, serene, and utterly unlike each other.
None of them are Goa. None of them are Manali.
The five places, and what made them stick
At the top of Hanna's list sits **Varanasi** — a city she loved so much she once abandoned a long-distance train just to go back to it. The street food, the lassi, the relentless energy and the warmth of its people all folded into what became, for her, the defining memory of India.
**Dharamshala** came second. A ten-day meditation course there gave her more than a practice — it gave her a shift in perspective. The Triund trek, one of her first serious hikes, added a physical dimension to what was already an inward journey. She left the hill town feeling, by her own account, genuinely changed.
**Meghalaya** ranked third, and it's easy to see why it felt so different. Moving between Shillong, Sohra and the village of Kongthong — known for its whistled names — she found pine forests, dramatic waterfalls, laid-back cafes and a cultural texture that felt nothing like the India she'd encountered elsewhere. It was also, she noted, one of the places where she felt most at ease travelling alone.
**Hampi** took fourth place. The surreal landscape of giant boulders and centuries-old temple ruins gave her mornings soundtracked by distant puja ceremonies. A stranger she met while clambering over the rocks eventually became one of her closest friends — the kind of encounter that only seems to happen when you're moving slowly and without a fixed plan.
Rounding out the five was **Ellora Caves**, where the sheer scale of rock-cut architecture — carved by hand, across multiple faiths, over many centuries — stopped her in her tracks. For Hanna, it was the sort of place that makes you genuinely quiet.
Why this matters for a solo travel audience in India
Hanna's list is a useful corrective for Indian solo travellers, not just foreign ones. Varanasi and Hampi appear on domestic bucket lists but are often rushed through. Meghalaya, despite growing in popularity, still sees a fraction of the footfall that Himachal Pradesh does. Dharamshala is frequently treated as a weekend escape rather than a place worth slowing down in. And Ellora, sitting an hour from Aurangabad, is regularly skipped by travellers who stop at Ajanta and call it done.
What Hanna's journey really demonstrates is the value of unscheduled time — the kind that lets you return to a city you love, say yes to a ten-day course, or sit with a stranger on a boulder until they become a friend. That kind of travel is available to anyone moving through India, and it tends to produce the stories worth telling.