Travel in Bikaner

Bikaner sits on the old caravan route between Central Asia and the plains of Rajasthan, and that is how our itineraries treat it: a place to break a long desert drive, with one night to sleep. Two of the fifteen India tours we sell go there. Neither gives it more than a single night, and this page is written as a stopover page rather than a stay.

On Rajasthan – The Land of Kings (14 days, from EUR 1,800, /tour/rajasthan-the-land-of-kings/) Bikaner is day 8. You leave Jaipur in the morning and drive west along the old trade routes through the Shekhawati region, stopping at Fatehpur to look inside the painted havelis the merchants there left behind. You reach Bikaner in the afternoon and sleep there. Day 9 opens at Junagarh Fort, which the Bikaner rulers extended generation after generation, each wing built to the taste of its own century. Then you are back in the car and heading deeper into the Thar Desert for two nights in Jaisalmer.

On North India – landscapes and culture (21 days, from EUR 2,300, /tour/north-india-landscapes-and-culture/) the same road runs the other way. You arrive from Jaisalmer on day 10, stopping at the Ram Deora temple on the way. Day 11 begins with a tuk-tuk ride through the old town while it is still waking up, then Junagarh Fort again, then out to the Shekhawati towns for their havelis and painted walls. You sleep that night in Nawalgarh, not in Bikaner. The hotel named for the Bikaner night on this tour is the Maharaja Ganga Mahal, Royal Deluxe room, or similar.

Now the part that matters more. The Karni Mata rat temple at Deshnoke, the thing most people have actually heard of, is listed as an optional visit on the Rajasthan tour and does not appear anywhere in the North India itinerary. Optional means it is not a fixed inclusion of the day. If Deshnoke is your reason for wanting Bikaner at all, say so when you enquire and get it written into the itinerary before you book.

The camel breeding farm on the edge of town is in neither tour. Nor is a camel ride here: in both itineraries the ride into the dunes happens at Jaisalmer, on the afternoon of day 10 on the Rajasthan tour and day 9 on the North India one. Bikaner's camel festival in January is not something either route is built around. Our trips are private and run on your dates, so nothing is timed to a festival unless you ask for it.

There is no flight and no train into Bikaner on either tour. You arrive by road and leave by road, and both of those are real travel days with a stop or two, not sightseeing days. If long drives are hard for you, this leg is the one to ask about.

Both tours include the Taj Mahal, which is closed on Fridays. That one closure sets the whole date chain: Agra has to land on a non-Friday, and every day before and after it, Bikaner included, moves with it. The 21-day tour has two more closures pulling at the calendar, the Calico Textile Museum in Ahmedabad on Wednesdays and the Akshardham temples on Mondays. Give us your arrival date early and we build the sequence around them.

Every tour we run is private and guided. There are no group departures and no fixed dates, one Holi trip aside. A German-speaking guide, 24-hour contact and a bottle of water on arrival are included on both routes. International flights are not; the Udaipur to Delhi flight on day 14 of the Rajasthan tour is written into the itinerary and is included. Rooms come as Standard, Deluxe, Superior or Executive. There is no five-star tier, and the heritage properties used around Bikaner and the Shekhawati are exactly that: old buildings with character, not luxury hotels.

If you want real time in Bikaner, two or three days with the temple, the market and your own pace, that is a change to one of these two routes and we will price it. As the itineraries stand today, one night is what you get. The wider region is covered on /destinations/rajasthan/.