4 Days in India: The Golden Triangle at an Easier Pace

Your driver and guide meet you in the morning.

• We give the first half of the day to Old Delhi.
• The Jama Masjid stands above the lanes of Chandni Chowk, and from there you walk on, using a cycle rickshaw for the longer stretches, to the spice market at Khari Baoli.
• The food in these lanes is a large part of what the neighbourhood is.
• A guide who knows which stalls turn over quickly makes tasting it a pleasure and not a risk.
• In the afternoon the car takes you into New Delhi, the broad, planned city of the early twentieth century.
• You see India Gate and the ceremonial avenue beyond it.
• The stop to protect, if the day runs long, is Humayun's Tomb.
• Built in the 1560s, it is the model the Taj Mahal refined: the same four-part garden, the same central dome on a raised plinth.
• Seeing it first turns Agra from a photograph into a sequence.
• If you still have energy, Qutub Minar in the south of the city is lit in the evening.
• If you do not, skip it.
• Tomorrow starts early.
• A word on Delhi traffic, because it is not a rumour.
• In the morning rush and again from late afternoon, a 10 km crossing can take an hour.
• We group each half of the day by geography so the car spends more time parked at monuments than crawling between them.

Leave Delhi early.

• On the expressway, a departure around 05:00 puts you in Agra in time for a full morning.
• A fast train exists on this route and takes under two hours, but your car carries your guide and your luggage and lets you stop where you like, so the car is our plan.
• The Taj Mahal is the point of the day, so give it two to three hours and not the forty minutes most visits allow.
• Shah Jahan finished it in 1653 for Mumtaz Mahal.
• Walk the length of the water channel.
• Go inside the mausoleum to see the pietra dura inlay and the marble screen around the cenotaphs.
• Then walk to the river terrace at the back, where almost nobody stands, and the building looks most like the engineering feat it is.
• In the afternoon, Agra Fort lies ten minutes away and it is far from a filler.
• Shah Jahan was held here by his son Aurangzeb, in an octagonal tower with a view straight down the Yamuna to the Taj.
• If there is light left, Itimad-ud-Daulah, the Baby Taj, is smaller, quieter and was finished about fifteen years before work on the Taj began.
• Sunrise entry is the better visit if you prefer a quieter hour, and from December to January fog can hide it.
• If you arrive in the morning instead, the last two hours before closing are the next best time, when the crowds thin and the light turns warm.
• We choose with you.

If you would like the Taj once more at opening, you can be at the gate early and on the road by 09:00.

• Otherwise we leave Agra around 08:00.
• Fatehpur Sikri is an hour west.
• Emperor Akbar built it from nothing in the 1570s and left it after about fourteen years, so the entire complex survives without later rebuilding.
• Ninety minutes is enough.
• The great gateway, the Buland Darwaza, and the Diwan-i-Khas with its single carved central pillar are the parts people remember.
• The site is lightly signed, so your guide is arranged in advance.
• Another three hours brings you into Jaipur in the early afternoon.
• Spend it in the old walled city, which is compact enough to cover on foot.
• The City Palace is still partly the home of the former royal family.
• Jantar Mantar is an eighteenth-century observatory of stone instruments built at architectural scale, including a sundial that reads time to the second.
• The Hawa Mahal is a five-storey screen of small windows, built so that women of the court could watch the street unseen.
• The front is best photographed in the morning from a rooftop cafe across the road.
• Finish on the ridge at Nahargarh Fort for sunset over the grid of the city, then eat in the old town.
• Tomorrow is the fort day, and it wants an early start.

Amber Fort is the reason the fourth day exists.

• It lies about 11 km from the city, 30 to 40 minutes by car, and we arrive at opening, around 08:00.
• The light on the hillside is good and the courtyards fill quickly by mid-morning.
• The fort is a hill palace of successive courtyards, and the Sheesh Mahal, a hall inlaid with mirrors, is the piece most visitors come for.
• We suggest walking up.
• The climb takes about fifteen minutes, and the elephant ride has long drawn welfare concerns.
• Below the fort, the Panna Meena ka Kund stepwell and the Jal Mahal, a palace that seems to float on its lake, are both a few minutes away.
• You are back in the city by lunch.
• The afternoon is where a second day in Jaipur pays off.
• The city has been a working craft centre for about three centuries: hand block printing, blue pottery, gem cutting and textile work.
• Spending two or three hours actually trying one of these is a better use of the time than adding another fort.
• Or you can sit down to a home meal with a local family, or walk the old bazaars after dark.
• If you fly out on day 5, Jaipur airport is about twenty minutes from the old city.
• If you return to Delhi by road, allow five to six hours and leave early.