7 Days in India: Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Udaipur by Private Car

Most international flights reach Delhi in the small hours or early morning.

• Treat Day 1 as a half day.
• If you land before dawn, we can arrange for your room to be ready on arrival, so that you can sleep before anything else happens.
• Two hours of rest do more for the week than one extra monument.
• In the afternoon, your driver and guide take you through New Delhi, the wide, green part of the city.
• Start at Humayun's Tomb, finished in 1572.
• It is the first great garden tomb of the Mughal line, and it is the ancestor of the Taj Mahal you will see on Day 4.
• Seeing it first means the Taj arrives as the end of a story.
• If you have energy, add the Qutub Minar complex and a slow drive past India Gate.
• That is enough.
• The distances in Delhi are long and the traffic is real, and tomorrow is a full day.

Old Delhi belongs to the morning.

• By early afternoon the heat is up and the lanes are jammed, but at eight it is busy in a way you can enjoy.
• Begin at Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India.
• From there you go down into Chandni Chowk, with your guide leading you through the bazaar.
• A cycle rickshaw is the right way to see the narrow lanes.
• They are too tight for a car and too long to walk end to end.
• You pass the spice market at Khari Baoli and the silver lanes, and you see the city at handlebar height.
• Lunch is part of the walk, not a separate event.
• Old Delhi has some of the best street food in the north, and on your second day it helps to have a guide choose the stalls with fast turnover.
• Parathas in Paranthe Wali Gali, kebabs near the mosque, something sweet at the end.
• In the afternoon, visit the Red Fort, or go quietly to Raj Ghat if the morning has used you up.
• Stop there.
• Two focused half days in Delhi are better than one exhausted push.

The drive from Delhi to Agra takes about three to three and a half hours on the Yamuna Expressway, a modern road that is smooth and quick.

• Your driver leaves after breakfast, and you can stop where you like. (A fast train exists between the two cities, but the car suits this plan better: it takes your luggage, keeps your timing flexible and spares you a station transfer.)
• You do not see the Taj Mahal today, and that is deliberate.
• After checking in, go to Agra Fort.
• It is red sandstone from the outside and white marble within, and it was the centre of the empire before Delhi took that role.
• The marble palaces that Shah Jahan added are inside.
• From the Musamman Burj, the tower where he spent his last years confined by his son, you look along the river to the tomb he built for his wife.
• It is a stronger moment when you have not yet seen the Taj up close.
• If time allows, stop at Itimad-ud-Daulah, the small tomb known as the Baby Taj.
• It is quiet, finely inlaid and often nearly empty.
• Then cross the Yamuna to Mehtab Bagh for the evening light.
• From the garden you see the Taj from behind, across the water, with few other people around.

This is the day the trip is built around.

• Be at the gate before it opens.
• The Taj Mahal is Makrana marble, which is slightly translucent, and in the first forty minutes of light it moves from grey to pink to white.
• At that hour the crowd is a fraction of what it will be by nine.
• Shah Jahan began the tomb in 1632 for Mumtaz Mahal and the work ran for about two decades.
• Go close to the plinth.
• The inlaid flowers, cut from coloured stone and set into the marble, are what the building is really about.
• Your guide handles the East Gate entry, the security queue and the timing.
• Carry only a phone, a wallet and your original passport, which is checked at the gate.
• Large bags, tripods, drones and food stay in the car.
• Allow two hours inside, then go back to the hotel for breakfast and check out.
• The road to Jaipur takes about four hours.
• About an hour out of Agra is Fatehpur Sikri, the capital Akbar built in the 1570s and left after some fourteen years, most likely because the water failed.
• It is largely intact and largely empty, and it is the best stop on any road day in this plan.
• You reach Jaipur in the late afternoon.
• It is a long day, started at five and spent mostly on the move.
• Plan nothing for the evening except dinner.

Start at Amber Fort at eight.

• It stands on a hillside above Maota Lake, a Rajput palace complex that the Mughals influenced but never flattened.
• By eleven there is a queue for the mirrored hall, the Sheesh Mahal.
• Go early and you have the ramparts and the courtyards close to empty, which is the better part of the visit anyway.
• Then come back into the walled city for the middle of the day.
• The City Palace is still partly the home of the royal family, and its museum rooms are worth an hour.
• Next door, Jantar Mantar is an 18th century observatory of stone instruments that still tell the time accurately.
• It makes little sense without a guide and is quietly fascinating with one.
• The Hawa Mahal takes twenty minutes and a photograph, which is what it was designed for.
• The best view of it is from a rooftop cafe across the street.
• Keep the last hour of light for Nahargarh Fort on the ridge.
• From there the whole city is laid out below you, and Jaipur finally makes sense as one plan rather than a set of separate sights.

There are two ways to reach Udaipur.

• A morning flight takes a little over an hour, and our team can help you with that option, though flights are not included.
• By road it is six to seven hours, and the first four are plain highway.
• If you prefer the car, leave at seven and expect to arrive in the mid-afternoon.
• On a seven day trip, the flight gives you most of a day back.
• Udaipur changes the tone completely.
• The city is built around Lake Pichola, with the City Palace running along the eastern shore.
• It is the one place on this route where doing less is the point.
• Begin with the palace, a group of connected buildings added to over four centuries.
• Then walk down through the old town to Jagdish Temple and the ghats.
• End on the water.
• The sunset boat on Lake Pichola takes about an hour, passes the Lake Palace and stops at Jag Mandir.
• For many travellers it is the best single hour of the week.

Udaipur has direct flights to Delhi and Mumbai, and most travellers on a seven day plan fly out in the afternoon or evening.

• That leaves a morning, and the right use of it is not another fort.
• Walk the old town before the shops open.
• Have a long breakfast on a rooftop with the lake in front of you.
• If you want one more place with substance, go up to Sajjangarh, the monsoon palace on the hill, for the view back over the city and the Aravalli range.
• Bagore Ki Haveli, a restored merchant's house on the ghats, has a small folk dance performance in the early evening if your flight is late.
• If you are flying out on the morning of Day 8 instead, the day trip to Kumbhalgarh and Ranakpur is the best full day from Udaipur.
• Kumbhalgarh is a 15th century fort with the second longest continuous wall in the world.
• Ranakpur is a Jain temple of white marble with 1,444 pillars, no two alike.
• It takes about ten hours, so it only fits if the whole day is free.