Indian Punjab is rightly famous for Amritsar’s extraordinary Golden temple, the most sacred place in Sikhism and a spiritual centre like no other.

Yet for some reason, the Government of Punjab has proven utterly useless in promoting any of its other heritage sites.

Only a single fort in Indian Punjab - Bathinda - is actually a protected monument.

And there is probably no region in Punjab more unjustly neglected than Sirhind - a historic city half way between Chandigarh and Patiala.

In the 19th century, the French traveller V Jacquemont described Sirhind as “the biggest ruins I have seen in India after Delhi… ruins which cover the ground for a space of more than fifteen square kilometres.”

Sirhind is one of the greatest archeological sites waiting to be excavated anywhere in the world. The 7th century Chinese traveler Huan Tsang identified it as the capital of the Sutlej region, and describes it as filled with Buddhist monasteries.

Later in 1012AD, Sirhind became the temporary capital of the Hindu Shahis - the dynasty whose temples stand dot the salt range south of Islamabad and constitute the oldest temples in modern Pakistan.

It also has one of the greatest Mughal necropolises in India, yet despite being an hour from Chandigarh, almost no one visits except for pilgrims.

The spiritual heart of the town is the Fatehgarh Sahib Gurudwara and the Sirhindi Dargah, two spiritual centres on the same road, belonging to two separate faiths.

• Sam Dalrymple