Taj Mahal/Agra Day Tour from Delhi by India's Fastest Train

The train is the right way to do this

Delhi to Agra by road is three and a half to four hours and the return in evening traffic can be worse. The Gatimaan Express covers it in a hundred minutes at 160 km/h, with breakfast served at your seat.

That is two to three hours of your day handed back, and it is the difference between arriving at the Taj fresh and arriving at it stiff.

The journey

Early pickup from your Delhi hotel to Hazrat Nizamuddin station. The train runs six days a week — not on Fridays, which is also the day the Taj is closed, so the two line up.

Reserved seating, onboard catering, and a window of north Indian countryside going past faster than anything else on the network.

In Agra

A licensed local guide meets you at Agra Cantt and a private air-conditioned car takes over for the day.

Taj Mahal in the morning light. Your guide covers the things that make the building rather than the dates: calligraphy cut larger as it rises so it reads evenly from the ground; pietra dura flowers of forty or more inlaid stones; minarets leaning fractionally outward so an earthquake would take them clear of the tomb; and the one asymmetry, Shah Jahan's cenotaph, set off-axis beside his wife's by Aurangzeb.

Agra Fort afterwards — Akbar's red sandstone walls of 1565, Shah Jahan's marble inside them, and the Musamman Burj where he spent his last eight years as his son's prisoner, looking at the Taj along the river.

Lunch, then the evening Gatimaan back into Delhi.

Four options

Guide only. A car-and-guide version for travellers already in Agra. Or the full day with second-class or first-class train travel, lunch and every entrance ticket included.

Practical

Train seats are limited and released on a fixed schedule, so the earlier this is booked the better. Carry the passport you booked with; Indian Railways checks ID against the ticket.