From Delhi: Taj Mahal & Agra City Tour with Tickets & Lunch

Agra in a day, with the tickets already paid

The part of a Delhi–Agra day trip that catches people out is the entrance fees — roughly ₹2,000 a head for the Taj, the fort and the Baby Taj if you are a foreign national. The all-inclusive option here covers them, plus lunch, which removes both queues and decisions from a long day.

The drive

Pickup from Delhi, Noida or Gurugram in a private air-conditioned car, down the Yamuna Expressway, around three and a half hours.

Taj Mahal

Your licensed guide meets you in Agra.

Shah Jahan began it in 1632, the year after Mumtaz Mahal died. What your guide will show you is the work rather than the dates: calligraphy cut in increasing sizes so it reads the same height from the ground; pietra dura inlay where a single flower can hold sixty stones; minarets leaning fractionally outward so that an earthquake would take them clear of the tomb; and the optical trick at the gateway where the building seems to shrink as you walk toward it.

And the one flaw in a building obsessed with symmetry: Shah Jahan's own cenotaph, placed beside his wife's by Aurangzeb, off the central axis.

Agra Fort

Akbar's red sandstone stronghold of 1565 with his grandson's marble palaces inside. The Musamman Burj, where that grandson spent his last eight years as a prisoner of his own son, with the Taj visible down the river.

The city

Depending on time, the Baby Taj across the Yamuna — the 1620s marble tomb that introduced pietra dura to India and made the Taj possible — and Mehtab Bagh for the reflection view at the end of the day.

Three options

Guide only, for travellers with their own transport; car, driver and guide; or everything with lunch and tickets included.

Practical

Eleven hours door to door. The Taj is closed on Fridays. Tell us in advance about vegetarian, Jain or no-chilli requirements for lunch.