On day three of our trip to India, we are being driven along what might almost be a particularly neglected, potholed and dust-filled English country lane.

Only this is the road to Bharatpur, and the world and his wife – as well as his jalopy, his rickshaw and possibly his camel – are heading along it, bumping over ruts and stones, competing for space and struggling to see the way forward in the failing light and the thick, yellowish haze.

We’re in the back of a comfy, air-conditioned car, my boyfriend Jorge and I. But we’re holding hands and occasionally exchanging looks of something close to terror, as suddenly our headlights illuminate anything from a cow (which always has the right of way in India), a chap on a bike wearing a bright pink turban or, as now, a bus, heading straight for us as it overtakes a home-made truck packed with livestock and labourers.

Our driver slows to a stop and, almost at the last moment, the bus swings back to the other side of the road. We exhale.

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• Around India in 14 Days - view the slideshow

BACKGROUND

• Kumbh Mela: the largest pilgrimage

• DJ Nihal's pilgrimage to India

• Dine with a maharajah in Udaipur

• In search of India and myself

• Mumbai: a city of two tales

10 classic India stories

The travel editor at Times Online delves into the collection to choose his favourite features on India in 2007

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• Read 120 more articles in our India Travel section

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• 10 classic India stories

Multimedia

• Around India in 14 Days - view the slideshow

The scene feels almost apocalyptic. But it’s not the end of the world, simply the end of the day in rural India – the evening rush hour, if you like, for people who live amid the heat and dust of Rajasthan.

And while that drive wasn’t exactly fun, looking back, somehow it was one of the highlights of our two-week trip to India, up there with seeing the Taj Mahal, staying in a palace in Jaipur or watching the sun go down in old Cochin. In India, the journey, whether by train, rickshaw or elephant, is key to the experience.

Our day had started 12 hours before in New Delhi, getting up early to catch the Shatabdi Express to Agra. Seven hours later, we’re lunching at the Oberoi Amarvilas, having toured the awe-inspiring fort, from which Shah Jahan would gaze sadly across at the great tomb he’d built for his wife, and, of course, the Taj Mahal itself.

(Nothing, by the way, entirely prepares you for the sight of the Taj, and nothing, neither the crowds nor the cheesy patter of our guide – “built for love, by love, in love…” – really diminishes its impact.)

And then – while we could have been forgiven for thinking we’d earned an idle afternoon by the pool – we hit the road again, falling asleep in the back of the car and waking up to find ourselves in a traffic jam of pedestrians, cars and rickshaws caused by an elephant on the road to Fatehpur Sikri. Akbar’s beautiful, abandoned capital is a mere 37km from Agra, but that can seem like a long drive in India.

It’s a dreamy, Far Pavilions kind of place. But, after giving it the once-over, on we go, for another three and a half hours, passing crowded markets and women in Day-Glo saris doing back-breaking work in the fields, in a constant assault on the senses.

This is what happens, we told ourselves, when you set yourself the task of “doing India” in 14 days. Not seeing everything – which would be impossible – but getting at least a taste of some of its extraordinary diversity. Yet even that is quite a challenge, as we were discovering.

India is the world’s seventh-largest country by area, the second largest by population, home to some 1.12 billion people, speaking some 20-odd languages. It is the birthplace of four world religions and home to 27 Unesco World Heritage Sites scattered across a land mass stretching from the llama-inhabited Himalayas to the tropical beaches of the south.

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