Rajput refugees in the twelfth century, marauding Jats and Marathas in the eighteenth, rebellious sepoys in the nineteenth, gangs of outlaws in the twentieth – historically, anybody who needed a hideyhole could find one in the gorges and gullies of Chambal, and they did. Right up until the 1990s, Chambal was considered a big, bad no-go zone, full of bandits and robbers, their exploits romanticized in Bollywood movies like the gunslingers of the American Old West. Their stories still echo through the ravines today, none more so than of Phoolan Devi: the avenging bandit queen who eventually became an Indian MP.

Today Chambal is entirely safe, but its formerly fearsome reputation has been a boon for wildlife. The river is home to thin-snouted gharials, marsh crocodiles, a whole plethora of turtles, and the blind Gangetic river dolphin (a particularly rare and exciting sight). In the skies there are lapwings, Indian skimmers and sarus cranes, while the hinterland is prowled by hyenas, jungle cats, golden jackals and Indian wolves.

All this would be plenty to make Chambal worth visiting, but there’s so much more. There are camel rides through the ravines to the ruined citadel of Ater. There are boat and jeep safaris (though you can often spot nilgai or jackal just wandering past your doorstep). There are the temples and ghats of Bateshwar, where sadhus still come down from their caves to worship.

Wait, wait – we haven’t finished. There’s Etawah, where AO Hume escaped the final battles of the First War of Independence in a burka, to return and become the father of Indian ornithology. There’s Holipura, packed with crumbling havelis, where the Chaturvedi clan claim descent from the soldiers of Alexander the Great. And some of the best experiences in Chambal aren’t even planned – they come from stopping along the way, meeting locals who’ve rarely or never seen a tourist in their village before.

Of course, somewhere this special and undiscovered has to be incredibly inaccessible, right? Wrong. Chambal is only an hour and a half of good road from the Taj Mahal. That’s mad. It’s totally wonderful. We can’t recommend it enough.