From Delhi: 3-Day Luxury Golden Triangle Tour with Taj Mahal

Three days, and the first one earns its keep

Delhi in the morning and the drive to Agra in the afternoon, which is what makes a three-day Golden Triangle work at all.

Day 1: Delhi, then Agra

Jama Masjid, finished in 1656 and still India's largest mosque — red sandstone and marble around a courtyard for twenty-five thousand people. Shoulders and knees covered; robes lent at the gate.

Then a rickshaw through Chandni Chowk, which is the only sensible way to travel that street: laid out in the 1650s by Shah Jahan's daughter with a canal down its centre that reflected moonlight, and still organised trade by trade.

The Yamuna Expressway south in the afternoon.

Day 2: Agra, then Jaipur

The Taj Mahal at sunrise, when the gates open half an hour before the sun and the marble runs grey to pink to white with a fraction of the mid-morning crowd.

Your guide covers the calligraphy cut in increasing sizes so it reads uniformly from the ground, the pietra dura of dozens of stones per flower, the four minarets tilted outward so an earthquake would drop them clear of the tomb, and the single asymmetry in the whole building.

Agra Fort afterwards, and the Musamman Burj where Shah Jahan spent his last eight years as Aurangzeb's prisoner with the Taj in view along the river.

Fatehpur Sikri on the road west — Akbar's capital of 1571, abandoned fourteen years later when the water failed.

Day 3: Jaipur

Amber Fort early, then Jal Mahal from the causeway, the City Palace, Jantar Mantar and the Hawa Mahal, and back to Delhi in the evening.

Four options

Private tour without accommodation, or with three, four or five-star hotels.

Practical

Around 700 km of driving across three days, all on good highway.

The Taj is closed on Fridays, which sets the ordering. Entrance fees are separate unless stated — roughly ₹2,600 a head for a foreign adult.