Jaipur: Tajmahal Sunrise Tour with Fatehpur Sikri & Abhaneri

A 1am start, and three sites on one road

Jaipur to Agra is 240 km. To be at the Taj when the gates open you leave in the middle of the night — and the road east passes Abhaneri and Fatehpur Sikri, which means the drive itself becomes the trip rather than dead time.

Chand Baori, Abhaneri

3,500 steps in perfect double flights dropping thirteen storeys to a square of green water, cut in the 9th century by King Chanda so a village could reach water through a desert summer.

The base runs five or six degrees cooler than the surface, which was as much the point as the water. The geometry photographs like an optical illusion and you will have seen it in films.

You cannot descend to the water; the upper gallery and the Harshat Mata temple beside it are open.

Sunrise at the Taj

The gates open half an hour before the sun. The marble reads grey, then pink, then a cold white as the light comes over the far bank of the Yamuna. In winter there is mist on the river behind the dome, and the crowd is a fifth of what it becomes by ten.

Shah Jahan began it in 1632, the year after Mumtaz Mahal died bearing their fourteenth child. Twenty-two years, twenty thousand workers, and marble hauled from Makrana — which is in Rajasthan, three hours from where this tour started.

Your guide covers the calligraphy cut in increasing sizes so it reads uniformly from the ground, the pietra dura of up to sixty 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.

Fatehpur Sikri

Akbar's capital of 1571, abandoned fourteen years later when the water failed and standing complete because of it: the 54-metre Buland Darwaza, the Panch Mahal, the Diwan-i-Khas with its single carved pillar, and the marble dargah of Salim Chishti.

Three options

Guide only; car and driver; or car, driver and guide.

The Taj is closed on Fridays.