Elephanta Caves, Gharapuri Island

The best introduction to Elephanta is the hour it takes to get there. Ferries leave the jetty beside the Gateway of India and thread out across Mumbai Harbour, past anchored freighters and the long grey arm of the Sewri shoreline, until Gharapuri Island rises green from the water.

• A short causeway walk — or a ride on the little toy train that shuttles along it — leads to the foot of a stairway of roughly 120 steps, shaded by awnings and lined with stalls selling shell trinkets, sun hats and cold drinks.
• At the top, the basalt hillside simply opens.
• Cave 1, the Great Cave, is the reason for the UNESCO World Heritage inscription the site received in 1987.
• Cut into living rock rather than built up from it, the pillared hall is generally thought to date from around the sixth century, in the Kalachuri period, though scholars still debate both patron and date.
• Its centrepiece is the Trimurti Sadashiva, a three-headed bust close to six metres tall in which Shiva appears simultaneously serene, wrathful and tenderly feminine — arguably the single greatest surviving sculpture in western India.
• Ranged around the hall are panels of comparable power: the half-male, half-female Ardhanarishvara; Shiva catching the descending Ganga in his hair; the wedding of Shiva and Parvati; and Ravana straining to lift Mount Kailasa.
• Many carvings bear deliberate damage from the Portuguese period, which somehow deepens rather than diminishes them.
• Beyond the Great Cave, a cluster of smaller, plainer excavations — most of them Shaiva, with a Buddhist group on the eastern hill — repays the extra walk, as does the climb to Cannon Hill, where two rusting colonial-era guns look back at the city skyline.
• The island's name is Portuguese: a large stone elephant once stood near the landing and now sits in the museum garden at Byculla.
• The caves close on Mondays, ferries stop running in the worst of the monsoon, and the last boat back leaves in the late afternoon, so start early and carry water.
• Food on the island is limited to simple stalls and small canteens at the top of the steps; menus vary and not all of them are vegetarian, so read the board and ask before you order — plain vada pav, poha, bhajiya, cut fruit and chai are usually the safest and the best of it.
• Most travellers eat properly back on the mainland instead, in the Colaba–Fort–Churchgate triangle within a short walk or taxi ride of the Gateway, where Mumbai's pure-vegetarian tradition runs deep: Gujarati and Rajasthani unlimited thalis, Sindhi chaat and pav bhaji counters, Udupi idli-dosa halls and Marwari mithai shops.
• Even at long-established pure-veg houses it is worth confirming at the counter, since kitchens and ownership do change.