Travel in Rajasthan

Rajasthan is India's north-western desert state — hill forts, painted merchant houses, lake palaces, and the Thar running west towards the Pakistan border. Nine of our trips cross it. The shortest is a seven-day Delhi–Agra–Jaipur–Udaipur run built around Holi. The longest is 21 days, starting in Ahmedabad in Gujarat, working north through Rajasthan and finishing at Rishikesh, Haridwar and Delhi. Prices start at EUR 1,000 for the ten-day trip.

Jaipur is the one place all nine have in common, and four sights are on every one of them: Amber Fort on its hill above Maotha Lake, the Jantar Mantar observatory, the City Palace — still partly lived in by descendants of the former ruling family — and Hawa Mahal. Six trips add a Bollywood screening at the Raj Mandir palace cinema, and five close a Jaipur day with a rickshaw ride through the bazaars. After that they diverge. Three send you to a local family for tea. Royal Rajasthan & Varanasi adds Jaigarh Fort above Amber, the royal cenotaphs at Gaitore, and a textile house where you learn to tie a sari and a turban. Golden Triangle & Colors of India puts you at a hand-block printing table, then in a private home for a cooking class.

West of Jaipur the country dries out. Shekhawati — Alsisar, Mandawa, Nawalgarh, Fatehpur — is a scatter of small towns whose havelis are painted inside and out; four trips pass through it, two of them with a camel ride at sunset. Beyond lie Bikaner, for Junagarh Fort and an optional stop at the Karni Mata rat temple in Deshnoke, and Jaisalmer, a fort on a 75-metre hill where about a quarter of the city still lives inside it. Jaisalmer is on two of the nine, both with an afternoon camel ride into the dunes. Jodhpur, blue beneath Mehrangarh Fort, is on four. Southward the ground turns green in the Aravalli hills: the Jain temple at Ranakpur with its 1,444 carved marble pillars, no two alike, then Udaipur — City Palace, Jagdish Temple, and a boat on Lake Pichola when the water is high enough. Udaipur is on five.

Wildlife is not a footnote here. Ranthambore appears on five trips, each time as a full day of two shared safaris, morning and afternoon. The magic of Rajasthan adds an afternoon jeep safari at Sariska and two days at Dholpur on the Chambal, where a boat safari — water levels permitting — looks for gharial and Ganges river dolphin. Royal Rajasthan & Varanasi takes in Keoladeo Ghana at Bharatpur, once the Maharajas' duck-shooting ground, now home to more than 360 bird species and toured by rickshaw.

Rajasthan is rarely sold on its own. All nine trips visit Agra and the Taj Mahal, just over the state line in Uttar Pradesh but squarely on the route. From there the state pairs with whatever you want next: Kalimpong and Darjeeling in the Himalayan foothills by flight to Bagdogra, Kerala's backwaters by domestic flight out of Jaipur, Varanasi by night train, Rishikesh and Haridwar, or Mumbai and a beach stay in the Maldives.

One itinerary says something direct about the climate, and it is worth reading: the Manvar desert camp day on On the trails of the Maharajas describes merciless heat by day and freezing cold at night.