Jaipur: Small Group Tour with Transfers and Guide

Small group, which suits some trips better than a private car

A shared vehicle with a handful of other travellers rather than a private one. It costs a fraction of a private day and, if you are travelling alone, the company is usually the reason people book it.

What you trade is flexibility: the timings are fixed and the group moves together.

Amber Fort

The first stop and the big one. Begun in 1592 by Raja Man Singh on a ridge in the Aravalli hills above Maota Lake — a Rajput fort built with Mughal craftsmen, which is why Persian inlay sits beside Hindu carving.

The Ganesh Pol gateway, painted plaster over stone, with a screened gallery above from which the women of the court watched arrivals unseen.

The Sheesh Mahal, where thousands of convex mirror fragments were set into the ceiling so that a single candle read as a sky full of stars. And the Sukh Niwas across the courtyard, cooled by water running in channels cut through the marble walls.

Jal Mahal

A photo stop from the causeway. Four of its five storeys sit under Man Sagar Lake and there is no entry — no boat and no ticket, whatever you are told at the roadside.

City Palace

Mughal and Rajput architecture across a sequence of courtyards, part of it still the residence of the former royal family. The armoury and the textile rooms are the parts worth slowing for.

Jantar Mantar

Nineteen masonry astronomical instruments built by Jai Singh II, an astronomer who founded the city as a secondary occupation. UNESCO-listed, and the 27-metre Samrat Yantra sundial still reads local time to within a couple of seconds.

Hawa Mahal

The five-storey screen of 953 windows, from the street opposite — the angle it was designed to be seen from.

Practical

Seven hours with hotel pickup and drop-off.

Entrance fees are paid at each site: roughly ₹1,500 a head for a foreign adult if you enter everything.