Agra to Jaipur: The Drive, and Why You Stop at Fatehpur Sikri

Of the three sides of the Golden Triangle, Agra to Jaipur is the one where a private car is clearly the right answer rather than merely a comfortable one.

The trains between Agra and Jaipur exist but are slow, infrequent and awkwardly timed, and they take you past the one thing you should stop for without stopping. The road is about 240 km and four to five hours of driving, and it passes directly through Fatehpur Sikri, which is forty kilometres out of Agra.

That single fact settles it. A car turns the transfer into a sightseeing day at no extra cost in hours, because the stop is on the route rather than a detour from it.

Leave Agra by eight and you reach Fatehpur Sikri before the heat and the coaches, spend two hours, and are in Jaipur by mid-afternoon with the evening free.

Akbar built a capital here in 1571, in red sandstone, complete, and abandoned it about fourteen years later. The usual explanation is that the water ran out. What remains is one of the best preserved Mughal cities anywhere precisely because nobody lived in it long enough to alter it.

The Buland Darwaza, the victory gate, is 54 metres and among the tallest gateways in the world. The Panch Mahal is a five-storey open pavilion that steps inward like a wedding cake. The Diwan-i-Khas has a single carved central pillar that Akbar is said to have sat on while his advisers argued below.

It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it takes about two hours done properly. There is a shuttle from the car park to the monument because the last stretch is closed to private vehicles.

One warning that applies here more than anywhere in the triangle: the guides and "official" helpers at Fatehpur Sikri are persistent, and not all of them are licensed. See hiring a guide in Agra for how to tell.

Abhaneri stepwell (Chand Baori) is the one worth the detour. Around 95 km short of Jaipur and roughly 20 km off the highway, it is a 9th-century stepwell of about 3,500 steps descending thirteen storeys into the ground, and it is one of the most startling structures in India. It adds an hour to an hour and a half including the drive in and out. If you have any interest in architecture at all, take it.

Bharatpur and the Keoladeo bird sanctuary are a little off the route and only make sense if birds are a reason for your trip, in which case it is a morning, not a stop.

Highway restaurants cluster around the halfway mark. The larger chains are safe and dull. Eat before you leave Agra if you can.

What is not worth it: a marble workshop stop, which is not on the way to anywhere and is a commission arrangement. See shopping in Agra.