The site universe · 1,586 candidates · 352 districts · 33 states · built 2026-09-07
Coverage
A trail can only claim to be lesser-known if there is a complete list to be lesser-known against. This is that list, at the stage it has actually reached — with the parts that are still empty left visibly empty.
What this is. 1,586 Indo-Islamic places across three tiers. The backbone is the Archaeological Survey of India’s own list of centrally protected monuments, parsed from the Survey’s PDF and checked against its published per-state totals — 645 rows here are vouched for by that list. The rest are typed records from Wikidata, a locator cited tier C and dated, which establishes that a place exists and roughly where and is never an authority for anything about the past. 871 rows carry a coordinate. Classification as Indo-Islamic is by monument type and name and is a candidate judgement — every row records why it was picked up, so it can be overturned when someone opens the page for it.
The three tiers
| Tier | What it holds | Is it complete? | Rows now |
|---|---|---|---|
| P · Protected | Monuments on a government's protected list — the Survey's own, plus items carrying an ASI Monument ID. | Enumerable, and the only tier where "complete" means anything. Checked against the Survey's published totals: 3,699 rows parsed from its list against the 3,698 it reports, and every Indo-Islamic row in that list is here. | 1,245 |
| L · Living | Mosques, dargahs, khanqahs, imambaras, madrasas and idgahs in use. | Best effort, bounded by the source that was opened. The Waqf register would be the right authority and is unreachable, so this is built from typed records carrying no ASI id. There is no complete national register of living shrines, and this page will never pretend otherwise. | 327 |
| U · Unlisted | Sarais, stepwells, kos minars, tombs — standing but on nobody's protected list. | Never claimed complete, and visibly thin. Grows by correspondents and readers. | 14 |
The tiers are not equally trustworthy and are not meant to be. Tier P is an enumeration with an authority behind it. Tiers L and U are what could be found, and tier U in particular is thin — a sarai or a bawli that nobody has listed is, almost by definition, not in a database either. Both grow by correspondents and readers rather than by query.
By state
“Quiet” is the bottom two-thirds by English Wikipedia pageviews over ninety days, or no article at all — which is itself a strong signal. That pool is what trails are drawn from.
| State | Region | All | P | L | U | With coordinates | Districts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uttar Pradesh | Delhi & the Upper Doab | 273 | 252 | 21 | — | 143 | 49 |
| Karnataka | The Deccan Plateau | 182 | 176 | 6 | — | 32 | 27 |
| Delhi | Delhi & the Upper Doab | 166 | 135 | 26 | 5 | 112 | 11 |
| West Bengal | Bengal | 162 | 71 | 89 | 2 | 77 | 39 |
| Gujarat | Gujarat & Saurashtra | 160 | 151 | 7 | 2 | 99 | 29 |
| Maharashtra | The Deccan Plateau | 96 | 74 | 21 | 1 | 69 | 24 |
| Madhya Pradesh | Malwa & the Central Plateau | 94 | 87 | 7 | — | 57 | 20 |
| Haryana | Delhi & the Upper Doab | 85 | 83 | 2 | — | 62 | 17 |
| Telangana | The Deccan Plateau | 65 | 41 | 23 | 1 | 22 | 14 |
| Rajasthan | Rajasthan & the Desert | 50 | 48 | 2 | — | 35 | 13 |
| Tamil Nadu | The Coromandel & the Tamil Country | 49 | 18 | 30 | 1 | 37 | 18 |
| Punjab | Punjab & the Northwest | 48 | 36 | 10 | 2 | 25 | 12 |
| Kerala | Malabar & the Kerala Coast | 44 | 7 | 37 | — | 40 | 16 |
| Jammu and Kashmir | Kashmir & Ladakh | 26 | 15 | 11 | — | 15 | 9 |
| Bihar | Bihar & the Sher Shah Road | 20 | 14 | 6 | — | 13 | 12 |
| Andhra Pradesh | Andhra & the Eastern Deccan | 12 | 11 | 1 | — | 2 | 7 |
| Assam | The North-East | 12 | 8 | 4 | — | 6 | 8 |
| Odisha | Odisha & the Eastern Coast | 6 | 5 | 1 | — | 1 | 3 |
| Jharkhand | Bihar & the Sher Shah Road | 5 | 3 | 2 | — | 3 | 2 |
| Ladakh | Kashmir & Ladakh | 5 | — | 5 | — | 4 | 2 |
| Goa | The Konkan & Goa | 4 | 4 | — | — | 2 | 3 |
| Himachal Pradesh | Punjab & the Northwest | 3 | 1 | 2 | — | 3 | 2 |
| Mizoram | The North-East | 3 | — | 3 | — | 2 | 2 |
| Nagaland | The North-East | 3 | 2 | 1 | — | 1 | 2 |
| Chhattisgarh | Malwa & the Central Plateau | 2 | — | 2 | — | 1 | 2 |
| Uttarakhand | Rohilkhand & Awadh | 2 | 1 | 1 | — | 0 | 2 |
| Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu | Gujarat & Saurashtra | 2 | 2 | — | — | 1 | 1 |
| Puducherry | The Coromandel & the Tamil Country | 2 | — | 2 | — | 2 | 1 |
| Arunachal Pradesh | The North-East | 1 | — | 1 | — | 1 | 1 |
| Manipur | The North-East | 1 | — | 1 | — | 1 | 1 |
| Meghalaya | The North-East | 1 | — | 1 | — | 1 | 1 |
| Andaman and Nicobar Islands | The Coromandel & the Tamil Country | 1 | — | 1 | — | 1 | 1 |
| Lakshadweep | Malabar & the Kerala Coast | 1 | — | 1 | — | 1 | 1 |
Where the map is still empty
3 of 36 states and union territories have no row at all. That is down from thirteen: building tiers L and U reached Lakshadweep, Ladakh, the North-East, Puducherry and the Andamans, none of which had a single protected Indo-Islamic monument on the Survey’s list. The lesson is worth keeping — an empty column was a fact about the register, not about the ground. What remains empty may still be either, and neither is assumed here.
Sikkim · Tripura · Chandigarh
Deepest districts
Where the enumeration is thickest — not where the best trails are, which is a different question.
| District | State | Candidates | Quiet | Kinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vijayapura | KA | 86 | 84 | tomb, mosque, idgah, other, dargah |
| Agra | UP | 77 | 73 | tomb, gate, fort, hammam, other |
| Kolkata | WB | 64 | 64 | mosque, imambara, tomb |
| South Delhi | DL | 60 | 57 | mosque, tomb, other, gate, dargah |
| Ahmedabad | GJ | 46 | 42 | mosque, tomb, sarai, other, dargah |
| South East Delhi | DL | 36 | 35 | mosque, tomb, sarai, bridge, other |
| Lucknow | UP | 34 | 32 | tomb, mosque, other, imambara, dargah |
| Dhar | MP | 29 | 28 | mosque, sarai, tomb, palace, other |
| Hyderabad | TG | 27 | 27 | mosque, sarai, other, tomb |
| unknown | DL | 26 | 26 | mosque, tomb, sarai, dargah |
| Kalaburagi | KA | 26 | 26 | mosque, tomb, other, dargah, idgah |
| Panchmahals | GJ | 22 | 22 | mosque, tomb, dargah |
| Malda | WB | 20 | 20 | mosque, tomb, other, gate, dargah |
| Aurangabad | MH | 19 | 17 | tomb, sarai, mosque, garden, hammam |
| Burhanpur | MP | 18 | 18 | sarai, mosque, hammam, idgah, tomb |
| Jaunpur | UP | 18 | 17 | mosque, palace, hammam, tomb, other |
| New Delhi | DL | 17 | 15 | mosque, kos-minar, gate, bridge, tomb |
| Halol | GJ | 16 | 15 | tomb, mosque, dargah |
| Mathura | UP | 16 | 16 | sarai, mosque, kos-minar, tomb |
| Palwal | HR | 15 | 15 | kos-minar, sarai |
| Murshidabad | WB | 15 | 13 | mosque, imambara, tomb, gate |
| North Delhi | DL | 13 | 13 | mosque, bridge, other, tomb |
| Karnal | HR | 13 | 13 | kos-minar, sarai, fort, bridge |
| Ahmedabad City | GJ | 12 | 8 | mosque, tomb, gate |
| Kurukshetra | HR | 12 | 11 | kos-minar, sarai, tomb, mosque |
| Ajmer | RJ | 12 | 12 | mosque, dargah, fort, kos-minar, palace |
| Gir Somnath | GJ | 11 | 11 | mosque, tomb, other |
| Sonipat | HR | 11 | 11 | kos-minar, tomb |
| unknown | TN | 11 | 11 | mosque |
| Junagadh | GJ | 10 | 9 | tomb, mosque |
The sixteen travel regions
The Trails carry their own regions, built for the question a traveller asks. The archive’s Atlas has a historical region taxonomy — sultanates and their spheres — which is the right shape for the corpus and the wrong one for a route, and which has no node at all for the North-East, Odisha, Malabar or the Coromandel. Where a travel region corresponds to an Atlas node it links to it; where it does not, that is fine.
| Region | What is there | Atlas nodes |
|---|---|---|
| Kashmir & Ladakh | Snowbound Dec–Feb; permits and advisories apply. Shah Mir and Mughal-era wood-and-brick mosques. | Kashmir |
| Punjab & the Northwest | The road to Lahore: Sirhind, Sarai Amanat Khan, the Sufi shrines of the Bari Doab. | Punjab & Northwest |
| Delhi & the Upper Doab | Seven cities of Delhi, the Doab sarais and kos minars, Panipat and the Kabuli Bagh. | Delhi Region |
| Rohilkhand & Awadh | Rampur, Bareilly, Lucknow, Faizabad, Jaunpur, Bahraich — the Sharqi and Nawabi country. | Uttar Pradesh — Awadh, Rohilkhand, Jaunpur Sultanate |
| Rajasthan & the Desert | Ajmer, Nagaur, Jalore, Tonk. May–June is unwalkable; Oct–Mar is the season. | Rajasthan |
| Gujarat & Saurashtra | Ahmedabad, Champaner, Bharuch, Surat, Junagadh — sultanate cities and trading ports. | Gujarat Sultanate, Surat Port, Cambay |
| Malwa & the Central Plateau | Mandu, Chanderi, Burhanpur, Bhopal, Sironj — water architecture and the Begums’ city. | Malwa Sultanate, Khandesh Sultanate |
| The Deccan Plateau | Gulbarga, Bidar, Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar, Khuldabad, Aurangabad — the five capitals. | The Deccan |
| The Konkan & Goa | Bhendi Bazaar and the Bohra and Konkani Muslim coast; Janjira; Goa’s Adil Shahi remnants. | none — the Atlas has no node for this ground |
| Malabar & the Kerala Coast | Ponnani, Kuttichira, Kasaragod, the Kerala timber mosques, Arabi-Malayalam. Lakshadweep needs a permit. | Calicut Trade |
| The Coromandel & the Tamil Country | Nagore, Kayalpatnam, Kilakarai, Madurai, Arcot — Marakkayar and Rowther towns, Arwi. | Madurai Sultanate, Arcot Nawabs |
| Andhra & the Eastern Deccan | Kurnool, Adoni, Cuddapah, Nellore — the Nawabi south and the Golconda hinterland. | none — the Atlas has no node for this ground |
| Bihar & the Sher Shah Road | Maner, Sasaram, Bihar Sharif, Hajipur, Phulwari Sharif — the Grand Trunk Road’s spine. | none — the Atlas has no node for this ground |
| Bengal | Gaur, Pandua, Murshidabad, Kolkata’s Nakhoda quarter. Monsoon Jun–Sep. | Bengal Sultanate, Nawabs of Bengal, Murshidabad |
| Odisha & the Eastern Coast | Cuttack’s Qadam-i-Rasool, Bhadrak, Balasore — the Mughal subah nobody visits. | none — the Atlas has no node for this ground |
| The North-East | Hajo’s Poa-Mecca, Sylhet-facing Barak valley, Ahom-era settlements. ILP applies in four states. | none — the Atlas has no node for this ground |
Sources
- Archaeological Survey of India, “Centrally Protected Monuments/Sites: State-wise and Circle-wise” — asi.nic.in/pdf/CPM_List.pdf, read 2026-09-07. The authority for tier P. Parsing it produced 3,699 rows against the 3,698 the Survey itself reports, with 32 of 33 states matching exactly — the one difference is a sub-entry the Survey numbers inside another row. It is a register of what is protected and says nothing about who built a thing or when.
- Wikidata, queried 2026-09-07 — items carrying an ASI Monument ID (P1371) for tier P coordinates, and items typed as mosque, dargah, khanqah, imambara, madrasa, idgah, caravanserai, stepwell or mausoleum in India carrying no ASI id for tiers L and U. A locator, tier C. Three rows arrived with coordinates outside India — one plotted in the Caribbean by a sign flip — and are kept without a coordinate rather than corrected by guesswork.
- Wikimedia pageviews API, English Wikipedia, ninety days — the obscurity proxy for tier P. A measure of attention in English, not of worth, and biased against places written about in Urdu, Hindi, Kannada or Malayalam.
- Blocked: the Waqf Assets Management System of India (wamsi.nic.in) is the right authority for tier L and does not resolve from here. Until it does, tier L is bounded by what Wikidata happens to hold, which is a much smaller and more English-shaped set than the register would be.