An Indian Travel Itinerary (2 weeks)
the pink, blue and lake cities in two weeks (golden triangle tour)
Photo: Udaipur, Louise’s Camera, April 2023
So far in this India series I’ve shared my first impressions of India, our visits to New and Old Delhi and our experiences of the Taj Mahal at sunrise. This is the next instalment. Some of the links below are affiliate links and all are genuine recommendations for places we visited. If you’d like to support me to keep on writing, please consider a paid subscription and join our little community.
Our first attempt at a trip to India was in 2019 when we had started to plan for my fortieth birthday. That adventure wasn’t to be, and instead we took four of our children to California that April on a road trip that took in San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, Santa Barbara and the Pacific Coast Highway. Amazing.
This was before our days of independent travel and we had spent a glorious Saturday morning in a luxury travel agency, glasses of prosecco in hand, while we planned our tour of India’s golden triangle - an itinerary that was to come in (in 2019) at around £7,000 for the two of us including private transfers and luxury hotel stays.
Jump forwards four years (and one pandemic) later and when I contacted that same travel agency they re-quoted at more than £12,000 for almost the same journey.
Surely I could do this myself for less.
So four years on I was spending another Saturday, this time cwtched up with a blanket and my laptop and supplied with endless cups of tea rather than prosecco, putting together an itinerary for two weeks in northwestern India, bookended by the flights to New Delhi that Mark had organised using our Virgin Atlantic points. (If you’re interested, he’ll be sharing how we did this here in a future post.)
Today, I’m sharing our itinerary with you, in the hope that you too might find a way to save thousands of pounds by booking your travels to India independently. And I’ll also share the two small changes we would make to this itinerary were we to do it again.
Here’s to stretching ourselves, travelling and having adventures!
Photo: Chilli Market, Old Delhi, Louise’s Camera, April 2023
Days 1 to 3: New Delhi
New Delhi is the best and worst way to start a first-ever trip to India. The chaos, noise and smells are overpowering and overwhelming, I hated it and loved it in equal measure. For the most part I am glad that we started our journey here, because after New Delhi everywhere seemed calmer and more manageable and our culture shock lessened every day throughout this first week. Be warned though, culture shock on a first-time trip to India is very real.
We stayed in the gloriously luxurious Leela Palace New Delhi in the Diplomatic Enclave area, a 25-minute drive from the airport and half an hour from the New Delhi sites of India Gate and Connaught Place and the wonderful chaos that is Old Delhi and Chandni Chowk.
We enjoyed two organised tours while in New Delhi - a Raj Tour with the brilliant team at Delhi by Cycle and then an evening Street Food Tour with the fantastic Vijay from Reality Tours. We had amazing conversations on both of our tours here - our guides were open and ready to share. What particularly struck us was how important tourism is in India and how ready people were to get back to pre-pandemic tourism levels. It’s important that we support companies like this who are employing local people and we’d highly recommend both these tour companies for your trip to Delhi.
Photo: Agra Fort, Louise’s Camera, April 2023
Days 4 and 5: Agra
Our original plan had been to catch the train from New Delhi to Agra and I’d booked an early fast train out of the city. Feeling lazy and enjoying the Leela Palace a little too much, we skipped our train journey and organised a private driver instead to take us to Agra in the afternoon.
This turned out to be one of the most memorable parts of our trip, for all the wrong reasons (you can read more here in my piece about the Taj Mahal). There are several trains from Delhi to Agra, but the fastest and best is the Gatimaan Express which hits speeds of 160km and takes less than two hours. Pre-book your tickets because even in low season they do sell out!
While visiting the Taj Mahal at sunrise was one of my favourite moments of all time, Agra was probably my least favourite city. There’s a huge amount of development work going on here, with a new metro planned to join all of the different ancient sites, and we could understand why a lot of tourists visit the Taj Mahal as a day trip from New Delhi. It’s certainly worth considering doing it in a day, but only if you can still make it here for sunrise, a glorious time to visit as this beautiful building catches the warm glow of the morning sun. Sunrise at the Taj Mahal is also quieter - but don’t expect to be the only people there, even at 6.30am in low season we were probably two of two hundred visitors.
Our guide (organised through our accommodation, Aman Homestay, just fifteen minutes in an autorickshaw from the Taj) was knowledgeable and engaging and so we asked him to take us across to Agra Fort in the afternoon too, worth a visit for its contrasting red sandstone buildings and interesting Mughal history.
Our stay in Agra was also notable for the cooking lesson we took that evening with Ranjana, the wonderful mother figure at Aman Homestay. She taught us a range of Indian dishes and bread, from Paneer Butter Massala to Parantha and Kachori.
Photo: Jaipur Flower Market, Louise’s Camera, April 2023
Days 6 to 8: Jaipur
Jaipur, the capital city of Rajasthan ‘land of kings’, holds immense historical and cultural significance. Known as the ‘pink city’ because of its stunning pink-coloured architecture, Jaipur is home to some beautiful buildings, including the majestic Amer Fort, Hawa Mahal, and City Palace. Jaipur is also a hub for traditional arts and crafts, with skilled artisans creating exquisite textiles, jewellery, and block prints.
We arrived in Jaipur via a private transfer which would take us to Jaipur from Agra via Fatehpur Sikri, a ghostly city and one of the most beautiful palaces in Rajasthan. Our stop was just an hour outside of Agra and our driver took us straight to the meeting place for official government guides. As ever with Rajasthan, the palaces at Fatehpur Sikri were beautiful and fascinating and our guide shared with us tales of Akbar’s three wives - one from Jaipur, one from Portugal and one from Turkey.
A guided trip to Fatehpur Sikri will inevitably also include a trip to the Jama Masjid, one of the largest and most beautiful mosques in all of India. Here you can visit the incredible white marble tomb of the Sufi Saint Shaikh Salim Chishti where you’ll be encouraged to buy a piece of cloth and make an offering. Don’t expect not having enough cash to put off the salesmen, they have credit card machines nowadays! Lean into it, pick up a piece of thread and tie it to the marble screen to make a wish.
A stay in Jaipur isn’t complete until you have visited Govind Dev Ji Temple, the main temple within the City Palace complex. Be there for 7:45am and you’ll witness one of the daily rituals devoted to Lord Krishna. Our hotel, the Samode Haveli, organised daily walking tours of Jaipur, which included visiting the temple during a ritual, walking through the stunning flower markets pictured above and then stopping for Chai and our now favourite Indian food, Jalebi (and here’s how to make Jalebi at home).
Photo: Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur, Louise’s Camera, April 2023
Day 9 and 10: Jodhpur
We took a train from Jaipur to Jodhpur and contrary to our expectations, it was a smooth and relatively effortless journey. (Booking train tickets in India is a slightly complex process but straightforward once you know how - if you’d like me to share how I did it, leave me a note in the comments and I’ll do a future post!). It’s approximately six hours by train, depending on which train service you manage to book, and we were lucky enough to have a sleeper carriage all to ourselves.
On arrival, our hotel picked us up from the railway station, and we drove through the hot, colourful streets of Jodhpur just as the sun was beginning to set.
Jodhpur is the furthest west we travelled in India, sitting right at the edge of the Thar desert and famous for its Brahmin-blue cube-like buildings spreading out from the magnificent sandstone cliffs of Mehrangahr Fort. Of all the places we visited in India, this was my favourite city, nestled under the cliffs and colour-matched to the sky, and also my favourite hotel of our trip. We stayed at the RAAS Jodhpur, a luxury boutique hotel with incredible views of the fort and a haunting location at the base of one of the city’s many minarets. The hotel was beautifully designed with a gorgeous mixture of modern and ancient, the service was fantastic (although we didn’t experience poor service once during our trip) and the hotel even had its own blue tuk-tuk and an electric auto rickshaw.
It was the electric autorickshaw that took us bright and early the next morning up the sloping road to Mehrangahr Fort, where we joined the team at Flying Fox Jodhpur for a two-hour zip-lining session across the monument, valleys and two lakes surrounding the fort. What an experience this was and an incredible way to see not just the fort and its Rajasthani architecture but also the ribbons of the blue city below it.
Photo: City Palace, Lake Pichola, Udaipur, Unsplash.com
Days 11 to 13: Udaipur
As trains between Jodhpur and Udaipur were non-existent, our second-to-last journey of this trip was via private transfer again, including this time a visit to India’s largest and most opulent Jain temple at Ranakpur. This stunning fifteenth-century temple is well worth a visit, just make sure you get the audio tour as guides aren’t allowed within the temple itself and read up in advance on the rules for entry and dress code.
Our final few days were spent relaxing on the edge of the beautiful Lake Pichola, in the Leela Palace Udaipur. This was by far the most luxurious of the places we stayed, arriving in absolute splendour, and crossing the lake in a private boat as musicians played. It was late April by now and very much the low season for tourists and so the hotel was more than half empty aside from the odd wedding and corporate event. We took a trip across the lake during our stay to the City Palace, probably the biggest and most opulent palace we visited while in India, but the rest of our stay here in Udaipur was about recharging ready for our journey home.
That came far too soon as we jumped on a short IndiGo flight back up to New Delhi, and stayed one final night at the Leela Palace before we returned the next day to the UK, sad to leave but looking forward to cooler temperatures and some simple beans on toast!
What we’d do differently next time
I alluded earlier to the fact that whilst this independent travel itinerary for the golden triangle and Rajasthan worked really well for us, there were a couple of things we’d change if we were to do this again.
Spend longer in Jodhpur - Two nights and one full day in the blue city were not nearly enough, and so next time we’d make this at least three nights and two full days so we could spend some time mooching amongst the labyrinthine and artesan streets of the city.
Spend less time in Agra - Next time I think we’d just spend one night in Agra, travelling down from Delhi in the evening and visiting the Taj Mahal at sunrise the next day. There’s easily enough time to visit the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort in one day and then either travel back up to Delhi, or on by train or car to Jaipur instead. If you’re willing to be up really early, it is no doubt do-able to visit Agra at sunrise from Delhi and then head back in one day, but take lots of water and be prepared to be tired!
Where next?
We met some really interesting people while we were travelling through India, both locals and tourists, and so have some great recommendations for where our next Indian journeys might be. We’d like to visit Varanasi, which was just too far for us this time, and the foothills of the Himalayas, perhaps in one trip. And another journey we might take could be to Mumbai, Goa and Kerala, but that will be for another year.
Have you travelled to India and where would you recommend others go? Leave your thoughts in the comments, or tell us where you’d love to go if you haven’t been yet and let’s start a conversation!
See you here next week if not before, and thank you for your support.
Louise and Mark x
Sounds like a fab trip! My favourite part of India was the Himalayas in the North. We went to Leh, Ladakh and I absolutely loved it around there. Didn't enjoy the 42 hour bus journey to get there though. Might fly next time!