So you are going to India. You've got your to-see list and your pencil sharpened to check off the sights. The impulse is only natural when you travel to a country as storied and as far away as India.

Missing the Taj Mahal is unthinkable, of course. Nevertheless, if you limit your touring to the greatest hits and bury your nose in the guidebook between stops, you'll be making a big mistake.

(ENLARGE)

The guard at the entrance to the Rajah's old hunting lodge, behind a hotel in Udai pur, India, gives an inpromtu your of the murals.

CATHERINE FOX / cfox@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

The writer and her group stopped to look at a goat market and became the objects of interest instead.

IF YOU GO Getting there Expect to pay $1,250 or more round trip from Atlanta to Delhi or $1,500 or more round trip from Atlanta to Mumbai, India. Touring India Several tour companies offer India itineraries, and a travel agent with good knowledge of the country can help you choose a tour that's right for you or put together a custom trip. We used Dan Mackey at Century Travel (404-478-8888, danmackey@mindspring.com). Friends also recommend Betty Jo Currie at Explorations Ltd. (770-432-3247, bettyjo@explorationsltd.com). For other travel agents who specialize in India, check the Web site of the American Society of Travel Agents, www.asta.org. International travel stories [an error occurred while processing this directive] Photos: Travel / International Galleries Latest deals! Back to: Travel | U.S. and international destinations

You can start by looking out the window. You will witness a collision of past and present, sensory splendor and unfathomable poverty, spirituality and commerce all played out where many people live — on the street. For this first-timer, that enduring spectacle was the essence of India.

Take a ride in a tuk-tuk. Sometimes the journey is the destination. In India, at least, getting there is always a trip. If there are traffic laws, no one observes them. Lane demarcations, one-way streets: Such things are ignored. Vehicles of all sizes — buses, trucks, bicycles — weave in and out of traffic with abandon, honking to signal their intentions. Animals share the roadways, too. A cow may settle down for a rest in your lane. It always has the right of way.

The tuk-tuk puts you closer to the passing show: A barber shaving a customer in a chair by the curb. Wooden carts overflowing with fruits and vegetables. The brilliant colors and patterns of women's saris, as mesmerizing as tropical fish. Goats trolling through garbage for lunch. The ancient temple near the modern high-rise near the blue tarp a worker calls home.

Be open to the unexpected. We took a walk on the grounds of our hotel in Udaipur and came upon a dapper old man, whose gray uniform matched his grand mustache, standing at the entrance to a little outbuilding at the back of the property. Curious, we stopped to chat. He explained that the building had been the local raja's hunting lodge. He had stood guard for decades, and even now, though it is no longer in use.

The spirited old man took us on a tour. He showed us the murals, a detailed landscape and a portrait of his employer that decorated the room from which the raja and his entourage used to watch boars and tigers do battle in the courtyard. Now, he said, as he proudly flexed his muscles, "I'm the only tiger left!"

Make unscheduled stops. We glimpsed what looked like pandemonium on a dusty stretch of highway. It turned out to be a goat market. Though bent on making time before sundown, we stopped. It was a spectacle: the crowds, the smell of the goats, their bleating chorus, the buying and selling, the ramshackle buses. We stood at the edge taking it in. Suddenly, we realized we were surrounded by a group of men. Sober rather than menacing, they observed us with the same curiosity that had drawn us to the market. For them, we were the exotic sight.

Head off the beaten path. There is lots to see in Jaipur. Galta, an 18th-century temple complex on the outskirts of town, is way down the list in most guidebooks. Go anyway.

After the frenzied activity and crush of humanity in this commercial hub, the approach through a nature preserve is downright eerie. But Galta, dramatically swaddled in a rocky gorge, is eerier still.

The buildings, richly decorated with fading murals, seem poised between decay and immortality. Monkeys, dozens of them, skitter from tree to ledge.

The place was empty during our visit, but for a woman whose child sat with a snake around her neck. A barely clothed ascetic wandering silently around the precinct posed happily for pictures. (We saw him later in a very faded argyle vest.)

We walked up the steps to a pool fed by a natural spring whose waters are deemed as holy as the Ganges, feeling strange and humbled by a culture we barely understood.