From Delhi: 7-Day Golden Triangle Tour with Amritsar

Mughal India for four days, Sikh Punjab for three

The Golden Triangle is forts and tombs, four hundred years old. Amritsar is a living faith and a modern wound, and the change of register is what makes seven days worth it.

Days 1–2: Delhi

Arrival and transfer. Then the capital: Red Fort, Shah Jahan's walled city of 1638 — closed Mondays — Jama Masjid, and Raj Ghat, where Gandhi was cremated and the flame has not gone out since 1948.

India Gate, Qutub Minar with the iron pillar that has stood 1,600 years without rusting, Humayun's Tomb, and the drive past Parliament and the Presidential Palace.

Days 3–4: Agra, then Jaipur

The Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, with the Musamman Burj where Aurangzeb imprisoned his father for eight years with the Taj visible along the river. Fatehpur Sikri on the drive west.

Day 5: Jaipur

Amber Fort, the City Palace, Jantar Mantar and the Hawa Mahal, with the bazaars in the evening.

Days 6–7: Amritsar

The Golden Temple — Harmandir Sahib — sits on a causeway in the middle of a water tank, open on all four sides to signify that anyone may enter from any direction. It runs day and night. Its kitchen feeds between fifty and a hundred thousand people free every day, cooked and served entirely by volunteers, and you can join them.

Before dawn is the hour to be there, when the Guru Granth Sahib is carried in.

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 a flag-lowering ceremony every evening — Indian and Pakistani guards high-kicking at each other in front of full grandstands on both sides. It is absurd and completely absorbing.

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