3 Days in India: A Private Golden Triangle by Car

Your driver meets you at the airport or your hotel, and your guide joins you for the day.

• We begin in Old Delhi because it is the more demanding half of the city, and you have the most energy on day one.
• The Jama Masjid, built by Shah Jahan, is the largest mosque in India.
• From its steps you look over the roofs and wires of Chandni Chowk, a street plan that has been trading for more than three centuries.
• From there you move on foot, or by cycle rickshaw for the longer stretches, through the lanes toward the spice market at Khari Baoli.
• The scents are strong and the passages are narrow.
• This is not a quarter to learn alone on your first morning in India, and having a guide at your elbow changes it from overwhelming to absorbing.
• After lunch the car takes you south into New Delhi, the wide, orderly city laid out in the early twentieth century.
• You pass India Gate and the ceremonial avenue that runs toward the presidential residence.
• Then comes Humayun's Tomb, a Mughal garden tomb of red sandstone and white marble.
• It is the direct ancestor of the Taj Mahal: the same four-part garden, the same dome on a raised platform.
• Seeing it today makes the Taj make sense tomorrow.
• If you land in Delhi on the morning of day one rather than the night before, we trim the afternoon to Humayun's Tomb alone and send you to bed early.

Leave Delhi around 06:30.

• The Yamuna Expressway is a modern, wide road and the early start keeps you ahead of the city traffic.
• Expect to reach Agra by mid-morning, with a tea stop on the way if you want one.
• We usually begin with Agra Fort, a vast red sandstone fortress on the river.
• Shah Jahan spent his last years here, held by his own son, in a tower that looks directly down the Yamuna at the tomb he had built for his wife Mumtaz Mahal.
• It is a good first stop because it tells you the story before you meet the building.
• After lunch and a rest at your hotel, the Taj Mahal comes in the late afternoon, when the day's crowds begin to thin and the light turns warm.
• Shah Jahan built it between 1632 and 1653.
• Walk the length of the water channel, then go inside the mausoleum to see the pietra dura, the flowers and vines cut from semi-precious stone and set into marble by hand.
• Go round to the river terrace at the back, where very few people stand.
• If you want the Taj at sunrise, that is possible too.
• It simply moves the visit to the morning of day 3, and your Jaipur drive starts a little later.
• Sunrise is quieter and the marble changes colour as the light climbs, though from December to January fog can flatten it entirely.
• We will talk through which suits you before you travel.
• Delhi to Agra is the one leg where we would mention the fast train.
• It takes about an hour and forty minutes.
• For a three-day trip we still prefer the car, because it carries your guide, your bags and your flexibility, and you are not tied to a platform timetable.

Set off by 07:30 if you are skipping the sunrise visit.

• Fatehpur Sikri lies about an hour west of Agra.
• Emperor Akbar built an entire capital here in red sandstone in the 1570s and left it after roughly fourteen years, probably because of the water supply.
• What remains is a complete Mughal city that was never built over.
• Give it ninety minutes to two hours.
• Your guide matters here, because the site has little signage, and there are plenty of unofficial guides waiting at the car park.
• We arrange yours in advance so you can walk straight past them.
• From Fatehpur Sikri it is about three more hours to Jaipur, so you arrive in the early afternoon.
• That leaves you a half day, and we will be honest: it is a taster.
• The old walled city is compact enough to cover on foot.
• The City Palace is partly still a royal residence.
• Jantar Mantar is an eighteenth-century observatory of oversized stone instruments.
• The Hawa Mahal is a five-storey screen of small windows, built so that women of the court could watch the street without being seen.
• Amber Fort is the finest single sight in Jaipur, but it sits about 11 km out of town and wants a morning.
• On a three-day trip something has to give, and this is it.
• If Amber matters to you, tell us, and we will suggest the four-day version instead.
• Finish with sunset from Nahargarh Fort on the ridge, looking across the grid of the city, then dinner in the old town.
• If you fly out of Jaipur the next morning, the airport is close and the trip ends cleanly.
• If you need to return to Delhi, the drive is five to six hours and the flight is short.
• Flights are not included, and we would plan that return as its own day.