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

A female guide, if you want one

This listing carries that option explicitly, which is unusual and worth naming. Guiding in Agra is overwhelmingly male, and plenty of travellers — solo women, mothers with daughters, older couples — would simply rather spend nine hours with a woman. The guides working this option are licensed by the same examination as their male colleagues.

The day

Pickup from your preferred location in Delhi, early, because the expressway is empty before seven and the Taj is best in the first hours.

Taj Mahal. Shah Jahan began it in 1632, the year after Mumtaz Mahal died. Twenty-two years, twenty thousand workers, marble from Makrana 400 km away.

The calligraphy cut in increasing sizes so it reads the same height from the ground. The pietra dura inlay of dozens of stones per flower. The four minarets, tilted outward so an earthquake would drop them clear of the tomb. And Shah Jahan's own cenotaph — the only object in the building placed off the central axis.

Agra Fort. Akbar's red sandstone city of 1565 with Shah Jahan's marble palaces inside, and the Musamman Burj where Aurangzeb imprisoned him for the last eight years of his life.

Fatehpur Sikri

Forty kilometres west, and the site most day trips drop when they run late.

Akbar built this capital in 1571 and abandoned it fourteen years later when the water failed — which is exactly why it stands complete. The Buland Darwaza, 54 metres of victory gate. The Panch Mahal, five open storeys stepping back as they rise. The Diwan-i-Khas, with one carved central pillar and four bridges 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

An Agra-start tour without tickets; from Delhi without tickets; from Delhi with Fatehpur Sikri; or all-inclusive with a female guide.

The Taj is closed on Fridays — the other two sites are open.