Rajasthan: 5-Day Tour with Jaipur Pushkar, Jodhpur & Udaipur

One night each, and the driving is the trip

Four cities in five days sounds fast, and it works because these are not big places to see — Pushkar is a lake and a temple, Jodhpur is a fort and a blue quarter. What you are really buying is the road between them, which is some of the best country in India.

Private air-conditioned vehicle throughout, with accommodation and daily breakfast.

Jaipur

Amber Fort on its ridge above Maota Lake, the City Palace, Jantar Mantar's stone instruments and the Hawa Mahal — and the bazaars, where the gem cutters and lac-bangle makers still work where the 1727 city plan put them.

Pushkar

A small town around a lake that Hindus hold formed where Brahma dropped a lotus. There are perhaps a dozen Brahma temples in the world; this is the principal one.

Fifty-two ghats ring the water. The town is strictly vegetarian and alcohol-free within its limits — no meat, no eggs, no alcohol, enforced.

Savitri Temple on the hill above gives you the whole lake at sunrise, up a long staircase or a cable car.

One warning: men at the ghats will offer a "Pushkar passport" blessing and then demand a large donation. A firm no is all that is needed.

Jodhpur

Mehrangarh rises 120 metres straight off the rock and was never taken. The museum inside is the best-run in Rajasthan, and the cannonball scars on the second gate are from a Jaipur siege.

Below it, Jaswant Thada in marble thin enough that sunlight passes through, and the blue lanes around the clock tower — the colour was a lime-and-copper wash that kept termites out.

Udaipur

The City Palace along Lake Pichola, built up by twenty-two rulers across four centuries. Jagdish Temple from 1651. And a boat at sunset, which is how the trip should end.

Practical

About 900 km of driving across five days, all on decent highway. October to March is the season.