6 Days in India: The Golden Triangle Plus Udaipur

Begin in Shahjahanabad, the walled city founded by Shah Jahan in the 1640s.

• The Jama Masjid anchors it, and the lanes beyond still follow the old plan: Khari Baoli for spices, Dariba Kalan for silver, Nai Sarak for paper and books.
• You walk most of it, with a cycle rickshaw for the longer stretches between the mosque and the markets.
• Eat as you go.
• Old Delhi's street food is a cuisine of its own, and the sensible way in is with a guide who knows which stalls cook in front of you and sell quickly enough to stay fresh.
• That one habit decides whether you have a good week or a difficult one.
• In the afternoon, visit Humayun's Tomb.
• Finished in 1572, it is the building the Taj Mahal grew out of: the same four-part garden, the same raised platform, the same central dome, worked out some eighty years earlier.
• Seeing it now changes how the Taj reads when you reach Agra.
• If your first day is a Monday, remember the Red Fort is closed that day, while the tomb is open.

Spend the morning in the Lutyens city: India Gate, the ceremonial avenue, the gates of Rashtrapati Bhavan.

• It was laid out from 1911 as a deliberate answer to the Mughal capital a few kilometres to the north, and setting the two side by side is most of what Delhi has to teach.
• Then drive south to Qutub Minar, begun in 1193 and the oldest layer of Islamic Delhi still standing.
• In its courtyard is an iron pillar that has resisted rust for around sixteen centuries.
• The Mehrauli Archaeological Park next door is almost empty and full of tombs and stepwells.
• Keep the late afternoon open.
• Dilli Haat and Khan Market are good for browsing.
• On a Thursday, Nizamuddin Dargah holds qawwali after sunset.
• It is a working shrine and not a show, so sit at the back, cover your head and let it happen around you.
• Tomorrow you leave for Agra.

Leave after a relaxed breakfast and take the Yamuna Expressway.

• The drive is three to three and a half hours, and your driver will take you straight to the hotel to leave bags.
• A fast train runs between the two cities, but this plan keeps you in the car so that luggage, guide and timing stay together.
• Visit the Taj Mahal in the last part of the afternoon, when the crowds fall away and the west face warms.
• Give it real time.
• Shah Jahan built it between 1632 and 1653 for Mumtaz Mahal, in white Makrana marble inlaid with semi-precious stone, and UNESCO listed it in 1983.
• The inlay inside the mausoleum rewards a slow look, and the river terrace at the back is the quietest part of the site.
• Agra Fort fills what remains of the day, and it is where the story closes: Shah Jahan spent his final years confined in a tower with a view down the Yamuna to the Taj.
• If you still have an hour, cross the river to Itimad-ud-Daulah, finished in 1628 and the first Mughal building faced entirely in marble.
• Bring your original passport, as it is checked at the Taj gate.

Go back at sunrise.

• This is the visit that justifies a night in Agra.
• The gates open before the sun, the crowd is a fraction of the daytime one, and the marble moves from grey through pink to white over the first hour.
• Allow ninety minutes, then breakfast and check out.
• In December and January fog can flatten a sunrise, and we leave room in the morning to wait for it to lift.
• On the road by nine.
• Fatehpur Sikri lies about an hour west: Akbar's sandstone capital, built in the 1570s, left after fourteen years and never built over, which is why it reads as a whole city.
• The Buland Darwaza gateway and the Diwan-i-Khas, with its single carved central pillar, are what people remember.
• Plan on ninety minutes to two hours.
• Three more hours brings you into Jaipur in the middle of the afternoon.
• Keep the evening free of monuments.
• Walk the old city, look at the bazaars around Johari and Bapu, and eat early.
• The pink walls come from an 1876 repaint for a royal visit that the city simply never undid.
• Tell your driver at the start that you would rather skip shopping stops.
• Tomorrow is the long day.

Reach Amber Fort around opening, about eight.

• The palace climbs the ridge through a series of courtyards begun in 1592, passing the Ganesh Pol gateway and entering the Sheesh Mahal, where mirror work covers the ceiling.
• Walk up the ramp.
• It takes about fifteen minutes and is kinder to the elephants than riding.
• Panna Meena ka Kund, the stepwell below the fort, takes ten minutes and is usually quiet.
• Back in the city, take in the walled core: the City Palace, the Jantar Mantar with its stone instruments built at building scale in the 1730s, and the five-storey screen of the Hawa Mahal.
• All three are within walking distance of each other.
• End on the ridge at Nahargarh for sunset, from where the 1727 grid plan of Jaipur is actually visible.
• Jaipur is also a good place to spend a couple of hours on craft instead of monuments.
• Block printing, blue pottery and textile work are all working trades here, and a workshop can replace a fort if you would like a change.
• Check tomorrow's flight time before dinner.

Fly.

• Jaipur to Udaipur is about an hour in the air, against six to seven hours by road, and on a six-day trip that difference is most of a day.
• Flights are not included, and we plan the morning around the schedule.
• A morning flight puts you at Lake Pichola by lunchtime.
• If you drive instead, leave at first light and accept that you will arrive with an evening and not much more.
• Udaipur is the change of pace and the reason for the sixth day.
• The City Palace is the largest in Rajasthan, grown over four centuries above the water, and its courtyards and museum rooms easily take two or three hours.
• After that, the right thing to do is take a boat on Lake Pichola in the late afternoon, stop at Jag Mandir and watch the light leave the palace walls from the water.
• Resist the idea of squeezing in Kumbhalgarh, Ranakpur or Chittorgarh.
• Each needs a full day, and adding one means flying to a lake city only to spend the day in a car.
• Walk to the Jagdish Temple, eat on a rooftop in the old town and let the journey finish quietly.
• Udaipur's airport has regular connections to Delhi and Mumbai the following morning.