The plateau receives you without ceremony
The road to Mandu rises through switchbacks and then stops rising, and suddenly you are on top of something. The Malwa plateau spreads in every direction, flat and ancient, and the town itself, if you can call it that, sits inside fort walls that were built to keep out armies and have since kept out almost everyone else. There are no hoardings announcing heritage. No chai stalls with laminated menus in four languages. The ruins simply stand where they were left, and the monsoon grass has grown up around them in the particular shade of green that only comes from basalt soil after weeks of rain.
