The Orange City
Nagpur
A city in central India named for a fruit: the loose-skinned Nagpur orange grown in the country around it.
Why Nagpur is orange
Nagpur, in Maharashtra, sits near the geographical centre of India. It is called the Orange City because the surrounding districts grow the Nagpur orange, a mandarin with a loose skin, a rough surface and a sweet, slightly sharp taste. The fruit has a geographical indication, a legal tag that ties the name to the region. There are two main harvests, one after the monsoon and one in late winter, and in season the markets pile up with fruit. The trees grow well in the dark, heavy soil of the area, known as black cotton soil. Here the colour is not on the walls but on the carts, in the wholesale market and in the local sweets.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Nagpur" on Wikipedia. If you know Nagpur and we have it wrong, tell us.
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๐ฎ๐ณ The Pink CityJaipurThe walled city wears a dusty terracotta pink, first painted on for a royal visit in 1876 and kept ever since.
๐ฎ๐ณ The White CityUdaipurWhite palaces and whitewashed houses stand around lakes in the Aravalli hills of southern Rajasthan.
๐ฎ๐ณ The Golden CityJaisalmerA fort and town built of yellow sandstone that glows like honey at sunset, deep in the Thar Desert.
๐ฎ๐ณ City of saffron and lightVaranasiSaffron robes, marigold garlands and oil lamps colour the river steps of one of the oldest living cities.
๐ฎ๐ณ Town of Holi coloursVrindavanFor Holi the temple town of Krishna's childhood fills with clouds of pink, yellow and green powder.Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Jodhpur In: Lavpatel2008, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Jaipur In: Chainwit., CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Udaipur In: Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Jaisalmer In: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, source
- Varanasi In: Marcin Biaลek, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Vrindavan In: Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY 3.0, source