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

Three UNESCO sites, twelve hours, one car

The Taj and the fort are two hours apart on foot. Fatehpur Sikri is another forty kilometres west. Doing all three from Delhi in a day is possible with a 6am start, and this is that day.

06:00 — Delhi

Pickup from your hotel or the airport in Delhi, Noida or Gurugram, then the Yamuna Expressway in a private air-conditioned car.

09:00 — Agra

Your licensed local guide meets you.

Taj Mahal first. Shah Jahan began it in 1632, the year after Mumtaz Mahal died. What a guide gives you is the craft rather than the dates: calligraphy cut larger as it rises so it reads evenly from below; pietra dura flowers of dozens of inlaid stones; minarets tilted outward so an earthquake would take them clear of the tomb; and the single deliberate asymmetry, Shah Jahan's cenotaph set off-axis by Aurangzeb.

Agra Fort afterwards — Akbar's red sandstone stronghold of 1565 with his grandson's marble palaces inside it, and the Musamman Burj, the tower where Aurangzeb imprisoned that grandson for the last eight years of his life, the Taj in view along the river.

Fatehpur Sikri

West in the afternoon. Akbar built this capital in 1571 and abandoned it fourteen years later when the water supply failed — the reason it stands complete is that nobody lived there long enough to alter it.

The Buland Darwaza, 54 metres of victory gate, with an inscription quoting Jesus carved on a Mughal mosque. The Panch Mahal, five open storeys stepping back as they rise. The Diwan-i-Khas, with a single 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, still hung with threads tied by people asking for children.

Three options

Guide only; private car, driver and guide; or everything with lunch and entrance fees.

The Taj is closed on Fridays — the other two sites are not.