Same Day Taj Mahal Tour by Car from Delhi in Agra

Three Mughal sites, one day, one car

The standard Delhi day trip does the Taj and the fort. Adding the Baby Taj is what makes this itinerary worth its twelve hours, because it is the building the Taj was learned from and almost nobody sees it.

The drive

Early pickup in Delhi, then the Yamuna Expressway in a private air-conditioned car — about three and a half hours with a break.

Taj Mahal

Shah Jahan began it in 1632, the year after Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to their fourteenth child. Twenty thousand workers, twenty-two years, white marble hauled 300 km from Makrana in Rajasthan.

Your guide will show you the parts that are easy to walk past: the calligraphy on the great arch, cut larger as it rises so the letters read the same height from the ground; the pietra dura inlay, where one flower can contain sixty separate stones; the four minarets, tilted very slightly outward so that an earthquake would drop them away from the tomb; and the only asymmetry in the composition — Shah Jahan's cenotaph, added off-centre by Aurangzeb.

Agra Fort

A walled city rather than a fort. Akbar built it from 1565 in red sandstone; Shah Jahan replaced much of the interior in marble. The Diwan-i-Am, the Khas Mahal, the Sheesh Mahal, and the Musamman Burj — the octagonal tower where Aurangzeb imprisoned his father for the last eight years of his life, with the Taj in view along the river.

Itimad-ud-Daulah, the Baby Taj

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

Two options

The tour with car, driver and guide; or the version with entrance fees and lunch included.

The Taj is closed on Fridays.