5 Days Golden Triangle Tour: Delhi, Agra & Jaipur Highlights

The highlights, with room to breathe

Five days across Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. Not an exhaustive itinerary — a well-chosen one, with each city getting a full day and the long drives kept between them.

Delhi

India Gate on Rajpath, the war memorial carved with more than 13,000 names. Qutub Minar, the 12th-century victory tower and the iron pillar beside it that has not rusted in sixteen hundred years. Humayun's Tomb, the Mughal garden tomb of the 1560s that the Taj was built from the memory of.

And Old Delhi if you want it — Jama Masjid and the density of Chandni Chowk, which is best from a cycle rickshaw.

Agra

The Taj Mahal, ideally at sunrise. Shah Jahan began it in 1632, the year after Mumtaz Mahal died bearing their fourteenth child; twenty thousand workers and twenty-two years.

What a guide adds: the calligraphy cut in increasing sizes so it reads uniformly from the ground, the pietra dura inlay of dozens of stones per flower, the four minarets leaning outward so an earthquake would take them clear of the tomb, and the one deliberate asymmetry in the building.

Agra Fort, and the Musamman Burj where Shah Jahan died a prisoner of his own son, looking downriver at his wife's tomb.

Fatehpur Sikri on the road west — a complete Mughal capital, built 1571, abandoned 1585, untouched since.

Jaipur

Amber Fort on its ridge above Maota Lake, with the Sheesh Mahal where mirror fragments turned one candle into a ceiling of stars. Then Jal Mahal, the City Palace, Jantar Mantar and the Hawa Mahal.

Three options

Car, driver and guides only, or with three-star or four-star hotels.

The Taj is closed on Fridays, which determines how the five days are arranged.