Travel in India

India is the largest part of our programme: fifteen private, guided routes, from a five-day beach stay to a twenty-five-day loop through the south. They are built from the regions we run repeatedly, not the whole subcontinent — Delhi, the Golden Triangle, Rajasthan, Varanasi, North India, South India, Kerala, Goa and the Andaman Islands. There are no scheduled departures. You travel with your own guide and driver, on dates set around you.

The shortest cultural routes are seven and eight days, and both add a fourth stop to the Golden Triangle. Colors of India runs Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, then finishes in Udaipur; Golden Triangle & Spirituality runs Delhi, Jaipur, Agra and Varanasi. The three cities are linked by road, and the drives are where rural India goes past the window. The usual Delhi day takes in the Red Fort, Jama Masjid — India's largest mosque, with room for 20,000 at prayer — the Bangla Sahib Gurudwara and the tombs in Lodhi Garden. The Holi route swaps that for Qutub Minar and Humayun's Tomb. Agra is the Taj Mahal, closed on Fridays, and Agra Fort; two of the fifteen routes schedule the Taj at sunrise. Jaipur is Amber Fort above Maotha Lake, the Jantar Mantar observatory, the City Palace and the Hawa Mahal.

Rajasthan is the deepest part of the catalogue — nine routes go into it. Five reach Ranthambore, where the full safari day is two shared drives, morning and afternoon, by jeep (up to six people) or open canter bus (up to twenty). The ten-day Magic of Rajasthan adds Sariska, one shared jeep safari in the afternoon, and two nights at Dholpur with a Chambal boat safari — gharial, Ganges river dolphin — when water levels allow. Then the forts: Mehrangarh on its 130-metre hill above the blue houses of Jodhpur, Jaisalmer still home to a quarter of the city's residents, the Junagarh at Bikaner. The fifteen-day Maharajas route camps in the Thar at Manvar — jeep safari, camel ride, evening music and dance, hot days and cold nights. Elsewhere: the painted havelis of Shekhawati, the 46-metre Raniji ki Baori stepwell at Bundi, the Jain temple at Ranakpur and its 1,444 carved marble pillars.

Two routes reach Varanasi, where roughly 90 ghats line the Ganges. You go by rickshaw to the evening Aarti and return at sunrise by boat, water levels permitting, a sitar player on board. The eight-day route flies Varanasi to Delhi at the end; the fourteen-day Royal Rajasthan & Varanasi gets there by overnight train in 2AC sleeper class. The 21-day North India route opens in Ahmedabad with a heritage walk that starts around 7.30am, works through Udaipur, the desert and Shekhawati, then takes the train to Haridwar and Rishikesh — ashrams, a morning puja, the cremation ghats at Haridwar. A twelve-day route flies Delhi to Bagdogra for Kalimpong and Darjeeling at 2,134 metres, with a pre-dawn drive to Tiger Hill and the 1881 narrow-gauge railway to Ghoom.

South India is the other half of what we sell. Chennai gives you St George's Fort and the 37-metre gopuram of the Kapaleeshwarar temple; then Mahabalipuram, UNESCO-listed since 1985, Pondicherry's French Quarter, the 61-metre Brihadishvara at Tanjore, and the Meenakshi temple at Madurai during the evening ceremony, elephant procession included. Kerala follows: Thekkady for a boat on Periyar Lake and a walk along the reserve boundary outside the park, a spice-hill plantation visit for tea, pepper and cardamom, then the overnight houseboat from Alleppey and Kochi for Fort Cochin, the Chinese fishing nets and a Kathakali performance. The 25-day route keeps going: the Nilgiri toy train to Ooty, Mysore Palace, the Bahubali statue at Shravanabelagola, the Vijayanagar ruins at Hampi, and four nights on a Goa beach.

Trips often end at the coast. Three five-day beach stays sell as standalone components — Goa, Marari in Kerala, and Havelock in the Andamans, reached by flight into Port Blair and a ferry past uninhabited islands. These are airport transfers and free days; on the Goa days the itinerary says plainly: no vehicle, no guide. One fifteen-day route pairs Rajasthan and Mumbai with a Maldives finish, by speedboat from Malé.

Fourteen of the fifteen routes list the same inclusions: hotel accommodation, breakfast, an English-speaking guide, 24-hour contact throughout and a bottle of water on arrival. The 25-day South India loop is the exception: it lists accommodation separately, so check that on the quote. International flights are never included; domestic flights written into an itinerary are, including Varanasi to Delhi, Jaipur to Kochi and Delhi to Bagdogra. Six routes name their hotels, several with "or similar": The Suryaa in Delhi, Trident in Jaipur and Agra, the Madin in Varanasi. Rooms are mostly Deluxe, Superior, Executive or Standard; there is no five-star tier. Some nights on the longer routes are not hotels at all — the camp at Manvar, the Kerala houseboat, the sleeper train to Varanasi.

Timing is a conversation, not a departure list. The one date-bound trip is Golden Triangle & Colors of India, pinned to Holi — spent in a royal garden, natural pigments, live performances and DJs. Prices start at EUR 350 for five days in Goa and run to EUR 3,140 for the fifteen-day India and Maldives route; the ten-day Magic of Rajasthan is EUR 1,000, the 21-day North India route EUR 2,300, the 25-day South India loop EUR 2,860.