From Delhi: Taj Mahal and Agra Day Tour with Fatehpur Sikri

Three UNESCO sites in eleven hours

The Taj and the fort are the standard pair. Fatehpur Sikri is the one that makes this day worth the extra hours, and it is the one most day trips drop when they run late.

The drive

Pickup from your hotel or the airport in Delhi, then the Yamuna Expressway — three to four hours with a stop.

Taj Mahal

Your licensed local guide meets you in Agra.

Shah Jahan began it in 1632 after Mumtaz Mahal died. What a guide shows you is the craft: calligraphy cut in increasing sizes so it reads uniformly from the ground, pietra dura flowers of dozens of inlaid stones, minarets tilted outward so an earthquake would take them clear of the tomb, and the optical trick at the gateway where the building appears to shrink as you approach it.

Agra Fort

Akbar's red sandstone stronghold of 1565 with his grandson's marble palaces inside, and the Musamman Burj where that grandson spent his last eight years as a prisoner of his own son, looking at his wife's tomb along the river.

Fatehpur Sikri

Forty kilometres west. Akbar built this capital in 1571 and abandoned it fourteen years later when the water supply failed — which is exactly why it survives complete. Nobody lived there long enough to change it.

The Buland Darwaza is 54 metres of victory gate, with an inscription quoting Jesus on its arch. The Panch Mahal steps back through five open storeys. The Diwan-i-Khas has a single carved central pillar with four bridges running to the corners, where Akbar sat while representatives of different faiths argued around him. And the marble dargah of Salim Chishti, whose jali screens are still hung with threads tied by people asking for children.

Four options

Guide only; a car-and-guide version starting in Agra; the full day from Delhi; or that with lunch and every entrance fee included.

The Taj is closed on Fridays — the other two sites are open, and the day can be reordered.