From Delhi: Sunrise Taj, Agra Fort & Baby Taj with Tuk-Tuk

Three monuments, and a tuk-tuk between them

The tuk-tuk is not a gimmick here. Agra's old city between the Taj and the fort is a working town of narrow lanes, and a car spends that stretch stuck behind a buffalo cart. An auto moves, and you see the town rather than the inside of a vehicle.

The long legs from Delhi are by private air-conditioned car.

Sunrise at the Taj

Early pickup from your hotel, airport or residence in Delhi, then the expressway with an empty road.

The gates open half an hour before the sun. The marble reads grey, then pink, then a cold white as the light comes over the far bank of the Yamuna; in December and January mist lies on the river behind the dome, and the crowd is a fifth of what it becomes by mid-morning.

Your licensed guide covers the calligraphy cut larger as it rises so it reads evenly from the ground, the pietra dura flowers of dozens of inlaid stones, the minarets tilted outward so an earthquake would take them clear of the tomb, and the single asymmetry in the whole building — Shah Jahan's own cenotaph, added off-axis by his son.

Agra Fort

Akbar's red sandstone city of 1565 with Shah Jahan's marble palaces inside, and the Musamman Burj, the tower where Aurangzeb imprisoned him for the last eight years of his life with the Taj in sight along the water.

Itimad-ud-Daulah, the Baby Taj

Across the Yamuna, and the one visitors skip. Nur Jahan built it between 1622 and 1628 for her father: the first entirely marble Mughal building and the first in India to use pietra dura. Smaller than the Taj, more densely inlaid, and nearly always empty.

Without it, the Taj would not look the way it does.

Three options

Guide only; private AC car with a licensed guide; or the same with all monument tickets included.

Practical

About seven hours of touring plus the road at each end. The Taj is closed on Fridays.