Travel in Sariska

Sariska appears in exactly one of the fifteen India itineraries we sell, and it gets a single afternoon. That is the honest shape of this page: a stop on a route, not a place any of our trips settle into. If you arrived here looking for a tiger-focused safari holiday, read the next few paragraphs before you enquire.

The tour is The magic of Rajasthan (/tour/the-magic-of-rajasthan/) — ten days, private and guided, from EUR 1,000. Sariska is day three. Day two is Delhi: the Red Fort from outside, the Jama Masjid, the lanes of the old city, India Gate, the Bangla Sahib Gurudwara, the Lodhi Garden. Day four is Jaipur. Sariska sits between the two, one night, reached by road. No flight or train is written into this itinerary, and Sariska has neither. The reserve lies in the Aravalli hills in Alwar district, roughly 200 km from Delhi and roughly 110 km from Jaipur, which is exactly why it lands where it does in the route.

What you get is one shared jeep safari, in the afternoon, up to six people in the vehicle. That is the exception on this trip. Everything else is private — your own guide, your own vehicle, dates set around you. The safari is not: you share the jeep with other travellers. The itinerary describes savannah and open woodland, and the animals it names as likely are sambar deer, nilgai, monkeys and peacocks. It says you may even spot a tiger or leopard. That wording is accurate and we are not going to improve on it.

Here is the part worth knowing before you book. Sariska lost every one of its tigers to poaching in the mid-2000s and was restocked with animals moved from Ranthambore from 2008 onwards. The population today is small and spread across a large reserve. One afternoon drive, in a shared vehicle, is a low-probability chance at a tiger. It is a good first afternoon in Indian forest, not a serious tiger expedition — better said now than explained afterwards.

The same trip does the tiger part properly three days later. Ranthambore gets days six and seven: an arrival day with Ranthambore Fort, the ruin on the 200-metre hill inside the reserve, then a full day with two shared safaris, one at first light and one in the afternoon, in a jeep of up to six or a canter bus of up to twenty depending on availability. Ranthambore is in five of our India itineraries. Sariska is in one. If wildlife is the reason you are travelling, that ratio tells you where your nights should go.

What Sariska does not include on this route: no morning game drive, so you see the reserve in one light only. No Bhangarh Fort, the ruin on the edge of the reserve that gets written up as India's most haunted place — it is not in the itinerary. No Kankwari Fort inside the park, no Siliserh Lake, no sightseeing in Alwar town. The reserve was the Alwar royal family's hunting ground before it was protected, and none of that history is on the schedule. The itinerary also does not name your hotel here. It names exactly one hotel across the whole ten days, the Raj Niwas Palace at Dholpur on day eight, so ask for the night-by-night accommodation list on your quote.

The rest of the route runs Jaipur (Amber Fort, Jantar Mantar, the City Palace, Hawa Mahal), Ranthambore, two quiet days at Dholpur with a boat safari on the Chambal when water levels allow, then Agra: the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort on day ten. The Taj Mahal is closed on Fridays, a real constraint on which day your trip can start, so raise it early. The flight home leaves after midnight on day ten.

Included: hotel accommodation, breakfast, a German-speaking guide, 24-hour contact throughout, and a bottle of water on arrival. International flights are not included, and that is the only exclusion the itinerary names. Rooms run Standard, Deluxe, Superior and Executive — there is no five-star tier. There are no fixed departure dates. For where this sits in the wider region, see Rajasthan (/destinations/rajasthan/) and the Golden Triangle (/destinations/golden-triangle/).