6 Nights 7 Days Delhi Agra Jaipur Amritsar Tour

Two very different halves

The first four days are Mughal and Rajput India: tombs, forts, palaces. The last two are Sikh Punjab, which feels like another country. That contrast is the reason to take seven days rather than five.

Delhi

Jama Masjid and a cycle rickshaw through Chandni Chowk, laid out in the 1650s with a canal down the middle that reflected moonlight. Then India Gate, Humayun's Tomb — the garden tomb of the 1560s that the Taj was modelled on — and Qutub Minar with the iron pillar that has not rusted in sixteen centuries.

Agra

The Taj Mahal, ideally at sunrise, and Agra Fort with the tower where Aurangzeb imprisoned his father within sight of the tomb he had built.

Fatehpur Sikri on the road west — Akbar's capital of 1571, abandoned when the water failed and preserved because of it.

Jaipur

Amber Fort above Maota Lake, the City Palace, Jantar Mantar's stone instruments and the Hawa Mahal screen of 953 windows. An evening in the bazaars, which is where the city's gem cutters and bangle makers actually work.

Amritsar

The Golden Temple is the centre of the Sikh faith — a gilded shrine on a causeway in the middle of a water tank, open on all four sides to mean that anyone may come from any direction. It runs day and night, and its kitchen feeds somewhere between fifty and a hundred thousand people free every single day, cooked and served entirely by volunteers. You can join them.

Jallianwala Bagh is next door: the walled garden where British troops fired on a trapped unarmed crowd in 1919. The bullet marks are still in the wall. Twenty minutes, and the most sobering place in Punjab.

Wagah border, 28 km out, holds the flag-lowering ceremony each evening — competitive high-kicking between Indian and Pakistani guards in front of full grandstands on both sides.

At the Golden Temple: head covered, shoes off, feet washed at the entrance. Scarves are free at the gate.