While India isn't typically my area I've read "White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India" (2004) and The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 (2008) by William Dalrymple and they were pretty readable. Also I've read "A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire" (2006) by Sugata Bose (I especially loved the chapter on the hajj).