You are not going to see India. Pick a thesis instead.
The country is twenty-eight states, twenty-two official languages and about four distinct climates running at once. Nobody sees it. Not us, and we live here.
What works is a thesis — one organising idea the whole trip answers to. Forts and the courts that built them. Food, cooked and eaten in four different grammars. The river, from where it falls to where it is burned beside. Textiles, which will take you to villages no itinerary lists. Tigers, which will take you somewhere flat and hot and extraordinary.
A thesis does the thing a list cannot: it tells you what to leave out. Without one you end up with the greatest-hits itinerary, which is nine flights, fourteen hotels and a feeling at the end that you were busy rather than anywhere.
The second trip is almost always better than the first, and the reason is that by then people have a thesis. The useful trick is having one the first time.
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