Golden Triangle Tour with Mandawa

Day 1:

Arrive in Delhi

Your driver meets you at the airport and takes you to your hotel. Once you've rested, your guide takes you out for the afternoon: Humayun's Tomb, whose garden plan set the pattern for later Mughal architecture, the carved 12th-century tower of Qutub Minar, and a drive past India Gate and the wide avenues of the colonial capital. If your flight was long, we'll simply move the sightseeing.

Overnight in Delhi.

Day 2:

Delhi to Mandawa

After breakfast you head northwest into Rajasthan, a drive of about five to six hours across increasingly dry, open country. You arrive in Mandawa by early afternoon and check into your heritage hotel, often a converted haveli or a wing of the old fort.

In the late afternoon your local guide walks you through the town. You'll visit several havelis, which may include the Hanuman Prasad Goenka, Murmuria, Gulab Rai Ladia and Binsidhar Newatia houses, the last famous for its cheerfully inaccurate paintings of a man in a hot-air balloon, a European woman in a car, and the Wright brothers' flight. Many of these houses are still privately owned, and a caretaker will open the courtyard for a small fee.

As the light softens, the ochre and indigo walls glow, which is when photographers do their best work here.

Overnight in Mandawa.

Day 3:

Mandawa to Jaipur

You have the morning for more of Shekhawati: a camel-cart ride through the fields, a walk past the town's chhatris and stepwells, or a short drive to Nawalgarh, where the Poddar Haveli Museum holds some of the region's best-restored frescoes.

After lunch you drive to Jaipur, roughly three and a half to four hours. You arrive in the late afternoon with time to walk through the old city's bazaars before dinner.

Overnight in Jaipur.

Day 4:

Jaipur

You start early at Amber Fort, on the ridge above Maota Lake, passing through the painted Ganesh Pol to the courtyards and the mirrored Sheesh Mahal. On the way back you stop at Jal Mahal, apparently floating on Man Sagar Lake.

In the walled city you tour the City Palace, part museum and part royal residence, and Jantar Mantar, an 18th-century observatory of huge masonry instruments, then photograph Hawa Mahal and its honeycomb of latticed windows. Your evening is free for Johari Bazaar or a Rajasthani dinner.

Overnight in Jaipur.

Day 5:

Jaipur to Agra via Fatehpur Sikri

You leave after breakfast and stop at Chand Baori in Abhaneri, a 9th-century stepwell whose thousands of steps fall away in a sharp geometric pattern, and then at Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar's capital of the 1570s, abandoned within a generation and remarkably well preserved.

You reach Agra in the afternoon. Your guide takes you to the Taj Mahal, completed around 1653 for Mumtaz Mahal, and then to Agra Fort, where Shah Jahan spent his final years within sight of it.

Overnight in Agra.

Day 6:

Sunrise at the Taj and Return to Delhi

You return to the Taj Mahal as the gates open, when it is quiet and the marble turns from grey to pink. After breakfast and check-out you drive back to Delhi on the Yamuna Expressway, around three and a half hours, and your driver drops you at the airport, railway station or hotel.