From Delhi: Overnight Tajmahal/Agra Tour with Fatehpur Sikri

One night, and the whole day stops being a race

The single-day version of this itinerary works and it is exhausting. Adding a night in Agra buys you two things that cannot be bought any other way: the Taj at sunrise, and Fatehpur Sikri with an unhurried morning rather than forty minutes before the drive home.

Day one

Down the Yamuna Expressway from Delhi, around three and a half hours.

Agra Fort in the afternoon. Akbar built it from 1565 in red sandstone; Shah Jahan rebuilt the interior in marble. The Diwan-i-Am, the Khas Mahal, the Sheesh Mahal, and the Musamman Burj — the tower where Aurangzeb imprisoned his father for eight years with the Taj visible down the river.

Mehtab Bagh across the Yamuna at sunset if the light holds, for the reflection view.

Night in Agra.

Day two: sunrise

The gates open half an hour before the sun. The marble reads grey, then pink, then a cold white; in winter, mist sits on the river behind the dome. The crowd at that hour is a fifth of what it will be by ten.

Your guide covers the calligraphy cut in increasing sizes so it reads uniformly from the ground, the pietra dura flowers of dozens of stones each, the minarets tilted outward so an earthquake would drop them clear of the tomb, and the one asymmetry in the whole composition.

Fatehpur Sikri

Then west, 40 km. Akbar's capital of 1571, abandoned after fourteen years when the water gave out — the most complete Mughal city anywhere, because nobody stayed long enough to alter it.

The Buland Darwaza, 54 metres of gate; the Panch Mahal, five open storeys stepping back; the Diwan-i-Khas with its single carved pillar; and the marble dargah of Salim Chishti, the saint whose blessing Akbar credited for his son.

Back to Delhi in the evening.

Three options

Car, driver and guide with your own room, or with a three-star or five-star hotel included.

The Taj is closed on Fridays, which sets the possible start dates.