India Chand Baori Step Well, Abhaneri

There are step wells all across Rajasthan but Chand Baori is thought to be the largest and deepest in the whole of India. It is about 1200 years old and has served to store water from the monsoon season: during the dry season, the ladies had to go down more flights of stairs to reach the water.
If you’ve seen Tarsem’s The Fall, you’ll recognise it as the spot where Darwin and Wallace reach the end of the road; it is unmistakably this one.
The ruins of Harshat Mata Hindu Temple are beside the step well, destroyed by Mahmud Ghazni. The carving was very fine and a lot of the surviving fragments can be seen in the covered walkway that surrounds the step well.

It’s wide-angle lens territory. Even then, it is not easy: it is no longer possible to access anywhere except the area around the rim. And don’t even think about a drone; a friend of mine tried it and almost sparked an international incident.

The only sensible way to get there is by car. If you’re travelling between Agra and Jaipur, this is on the way, as is Fatehpur Sikri, one of Agra’s World Heritage sites. There was plentiful parking.