Travel in Ranakpur

Ranakpur sits in a valley of the Aravalli hills between Jodhpur and Udaipur. Four of our fifteen India tours stop there. None of them sleeps there. That single fact decides whether this page is useful to you, so it goes first.

The stop is the Adinath temple, built for the Jain community in the fifteenth century and carried on 1,444 marble pillars, no two carved alike. It is the only thing in Ranakpur that appears in any of our itineraries. The Surya temple, the dam, the villages of the Godwar plain around it — those are scenery you drive past, not stops we sell.

Here is what each tour actually does. Rajasthan – The Land of Kings (14 days, from EUR 1,800) reaches Ranakpur on day 12, after a single night in Jodhpur. You leave the desert in the morning, stop at the temple, and continue to Udaipur for two nights. The itinerary offers a horseback ride through the surrounding forest as an optional extra at your own cost. Nothing else in Ranakpur is scheduled. India's facets & Maldives (15 days, from EUR 3,140) runs the identical leg on day 7: one night in Jodhpur at Ratan Vilas, the Ranakpur stop, then two nights in Udaipur at Fateh Niwas.

The other two come the opposite way. On the trails of the Maharajas (15 days, from EUR 1,840) gives you days 8 and 9 in Udaipur, then drives north on day 10 — a village visit, the temple, and a ride on the narrow-gauge train between Phulad and Kamli Ghat — before ending at the Deogarh palace hotel for the night. North India – landscapes and culture (21 days, from EUR 2,300) does the same leg on day 5 with the hotels named: two nights at Fateh Niwas in Udaipur, one night at Deogarh Mahal after Ranakpur, then the morning train from Kamblighat to Phulad on day 6 and on by car to Jodhpur.

So: two tours arrive from Jodhpur and sleep in Udaipur, two arrive from Udaipur and sleep at Deogarh. In all four, Ranakpur falls in the middle of a driving day between two cities. You are there for a stop, not an afternoon, and never for a sunrise — the day has to end somewhere else.

Now the part that matters more. Kumbhalgarh Fort, the long fifteenth-century wall an hour and a half up the road, is the sight most often sold in the same breath as Ranakpur. It is in none of our fifteen India tours. We checked every itinerary line by line. If Kumbhalgarh is the reason you were looking at this region, say so when you enquire — every trip we run is private and tailor-made, so a day can be built, but it is not in any published route and it is not inside any price on this page. The same goes for the leopard country at Jawai and Bera, south of here: no tour of ours goes. The only leopard chance in our India catalogue is an afternoon jeep safari at Sariska, on The magic of Rajasthan, which does not come near Ranakpur.

Ranakpur is also not named in the summary or the highlights of any tour we sell. It earns its place as the best hour of a long transfer day, and it is a genuinely good hour — cool, quiet, and unlike anything else on a Rajasthan route. But it will not carry a booking on its own. Choose the tour for the rest of its route, then look forward to this.

All four are private: your own car and driver, a German-speaking guide, 24-hour contact, no fixed dates and no group. Hotels and breakfast are included; international flights are not. For the wider route see Rajasthan and India.