Rajasthan Tour with Jawai Leopard Safari

A representative from Payless Tours India meets you in the arrivals hall at Indira Gandhi International Airport, holding a board with your names, and walks you to the private air-conditioned car that will carry you across Rajasthan for the next ten days. The drive to your hotel takes forty minutes to an hour, depending on the terminal and the traffic. Rooms are normally ready from early afternoon; if you land overnight, we can arrange an early check-in on request so that you can sleep before any sightseeing. Once you have showered and had a cup of tea, your driver and local guide meet you in the lobby for an unhurried introduction to the capital.

The afternoon begins in Old Delhi, the walled city laid out by Emperor Shah Jahan in the 1640s and first known as Shahjahanabad. Your guide leads you up the red sandstone steps of Jama Masjid, one of the largest mosques in India, whose courtyard can hold around 25,000 worshippers at Friday prayers. From the gate you climb into a cycle rickshaw for a ride along Chandni Chowk and its narrow side lanes, past spice sellers in Khari Baoli, silversmiths in Dariba Kalan and wedding-card printers with stacks of paper reaching the ceiling. The ride ends opposite the Red Fort, which you see from outside; the fort is closed on Mondays.

Your driver then heads south through New Delhi, passing India Gate and the long ceremonial avenue of Kartavya Path, to reach Humayun's Tomb in the softer light of late afternoon. Built in the 1560s for the second Mughal emperor, the tomb stands in a square garden divided by water channels, and its white marble dome set on red sandstone gave Mughal builders the pattern they later refined in Agra. Couples often find the quiet side lawns here the best place in Delhi for a first photograph together. Dinner tonight is at your own choice, and your guide can suggest restaurants around Khan Market or Connaught Place. Overnight stay in Delhi.

After breakfast you leave Delhi on the NH48 highway towards Rajasthan, a drive of about 280 km that takes five to six hours including stops. The first hour passes the glass office towers of Gurugram before the road opens out into wheat and mustard fields, brick kilns and long lines of trucks. Around the halfway point, near Behror or Neemrana, your driver usually pulls into a highway restaurant for tea, fresh lime soda and clean washrooms. The low Aravalli hills start to rise on either side as you cross the state border, and camel carts and women in bright veils working in the fields show that the capital region is now behind you.

You reach Jaipur in the early afternoon and check in at your hotel, with time to rest after the road. Later your guide takes you to the Albert Hall Museum in Ram Niwas Garden, a sandstone building in the Indo-Saracenic style that opened to the public in 1887. Inside are Rajasthani miniature paintings, carpets, armour, brass and pottery from across the state and, in the basement, an Egyptian mummy brought to Jaipur in the late nineteenth century. In the evening the building is lit in gold, and the square in front fills with families, pigeons and balloon sellers. It is a gentle first look at the city before the fuller sightseeing tomorrow.

For sunset your driver climbs the winding road to Nahargarh Fort, built in 1734 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II on a ridge above the city. From its western terrace the whole of Jaipur lies below you, its pink walls and white temple domes turning amber as the street lights come on one by one. Many couples choose to stay on for dinner at the rooftop restaurant inside the fort, where tables are set along the old ramparts facing the city. The road down is dark and full of bends, so your driver waits for you and brings you back to the hotel whenever you are ready. Overnight stay in Jaipur.

Your guide collects you early, around 8 am, so that you reach Amber Fort ahead of the tour coaches. The fort stands eleven kilometres north of the city on a ridge above Maota Lake and was the seat of the Kachhwaha Rajputs for well over a century before Jaipur was founded in 1727. You walk up through the Suraj Pol gate into Jaleb Chowk, the courtyard where the royal guard once paraded, and continue to the Ganesh Pol, a gateway painted with floral designs in natural colours. Beyond it lie the Sukh Niwas, cooled by water running through a marble channel, and the Jai Mandir with its ceilings of convex mirror glass.

On the way down your guide stops at Panna Meena ka Kund, a sixteenth-century stepwell behind the fort, where criss-crossing staircases drop eight levels to the water. It is a favourite spot for couple portraits, although visitors are no longer allowed to walk down the steps themselves. After a photo stop at Jal Mahal, the palace standing in the middle of Man Sagar Lake, you enter the walled city. The City Palace is still partly home to the former royal family, and its Pritam Niwas Chowk courtyard has four painted doorways, each one linked to a season, with the Peacock Gate for autumn drawing the biggest crowd of cameras.

Across the road is Jantar Mantar, the open-air observatory built by Jai Singh II in the 1720s and listed by UNESCO, where the giant Samrat Yantra sundial throws a shadow that you can watch creeping along its marble scale. A short walk away, Hawa Mahal shows its five-storey pink front to Siredeori Bazaar; entering from the rear gives you a view down the main street from its upper windows. The rest of the afternoon is free for shopping: Johari Bazaar for silver and gemstones, Bapu Bazaar for embroidered juttis and block-printed bedspreads. Lunch is at your own expense, and a thick lassi served in a clay cup is a Jaipur custom. Overnight stay in Jaipur.

Leaving Jaipur after breakfast, you follow the Ajmer highway west for around 145 km, a drive of about three hours. The road passes Kishangarh, a town known for its marble yards and for a school of miniature painting famous for the long-eyed figure of Bani Thani, often called the Mona Lisa of India. Shortly before Pushkar you skirt the city of Ajmer and climb over Nag Pahar, the Snake Mountain, which separates the two towns. As you come over the pass, Pushkar appears below you in a bowl of hills, its whitewashed houses and temple spires packed around a small, almost round lake that Hindus count among the holiest in India.

After check-in and a rest, your guide walks you down to the ghats in the afternoon. There are 52 stone bathing ghats around the lake, and pilgrims take a ritual dip here in the belief that the water washes away sins. You are asked to remove your shoes before stepping down to the water, and priests may offer a short puja with flowers; your guide will explain how to decline politely, or what is a fair offering if you choose to take part. Next comes the Brahma Temple, one of very few temples in the world dedicated to the Hindu god of creation, with a red spire and silver-plated doors.

Before sunset, couples often take the ropeway up to the Savitri Mata temple on Ratnagiri hill (ticket extra) to watch the light go down over the lake and the sand country beyond. Back in town, the evening aarti at the main ghats brings bells, drums and small leaf boats of marigolds set afloat on the water. Pushkar is a holy town, so meat, eggs and alcohol are not served; try the rose-petal gulkand made from flowers grown in the fields outside town, and syrupy malpua from the sweet stalls in the bazaar. Every October or November, around Kartik Purnima, the famous camel fair is held here, and its dates shift each year with the lunar calendar. Overnight stay in Pushkar.

This morning you drive south-west from Pushkar into Pali district and the granite country of Jawai, about 230 km and four and a half to five hours by road. The route runs through Beawar and past the market town of Sojat, which grows much of India's henna, so you may see green henna fields and drying yards beside the highway. After Pali and Sumerpur the scenery changes sharply. Smooth grey and pink granite hills rise straight out of flat farmland, some of them over a hundred metres high, with small white shrines sitting on their summits. Your driver will stop for lunch at a roadside restaurant along the way, at your own cost.

You arrive at your leopard camp or wildlife lodge near Bera in the early afternoon. Most stays here are in large tented suites or stone cottages facing the hills, and all meals at the camp are included for your three nights. After a briefing from the resident naturalist, you set out around 4 pm on your first safari in an open four-wheel-drive jeep. Jawai is not a national park: the leopards live on rocky outcrops between villages and fields, and the area was declared the Jawai Bandh Leopard Conservation Reserve in 2013. The tracks are rough and sandy, so a light jacket and a scarf against the dust are useful.

On a typical evening the jeep stops at the foot of a known hill while the naturalist scans the ledges and cave mouths with binoculars. Leopards here use hollows in the granite as dens, and as the rock cools they come out to sit on high points, often only a short distance from a hilltop shrine. Sightings depend on patience, but the open terrain gives Jawai one of the better leopard-viewing records in India. As the light fades you may also spot striped hyenas, jackals or nilgai crossing the fields. Back at camp, dinner is served outdoors, often around a fire on cooler winter nights. Overnight stay in Jawai.

A wake-up call with tea and biscuits comes around 5:30 am, and the jeep leaves while it is still dark. The dawn drive is often the most rewarding, because leopards return to their rocks after a night of hunting stray dogs, goats and the odd nilgai calf in the surrounding farms. Your naturalist reads fresh pugmarks in the sand of the dry stream beds and listens for the alarm calls of peafowl and langur monkeys. When a cat is found, the jeep keeps a respectful distance and the engine is switched off; with a mid-range zoom lens you can usually get clear frames as the sun lights up the granite in shades of rose and orange.

You return to camp for a full breakfast around 9 am, and the middle of the day is yours. Most couples spend it by the pool, reading on the veranda of their tent, or booking a massage at the camp spa (at extra cost). The naturalists are happy to sit down with you and go through the morning's photographs, showing how to tell individual leopards apart from the rosette patterns on their faces and flanks. Lunch is served at camp. If you prefer to stay active, a short guided walk up a nearby hill gives you a view across the reservoir and the patchwork of wheat and mustard fields that surround it.

The evening safari leaves at about 4 pm and covers a different group of hills, usually closer to Bera village. Rabari herders bring their flocks home along the same tracks at this hour, and you may watch them pass beneath a leopard resting on a boulder without either side seeming troubled. Your naturalist will explain how this unusual relationship works: the herders accept the loss of an occasional goat, which many see as an offering to the goddess, and attacks on people here are almost unheard of. Sundowner drinks are served on a rock outcrop before you drive back to camp for dinner. Overnight stay in Jawai.

Today begins at a slower pace, with breakfast at camp before a morning visit to a Rabari settlement nearby. The Rabari are semi-nomadic herders who have grazed camels, goats and sheep across western Rajasthan for centuries. The men wear white pleated kediya jackets and large red or white turbans, while the women dress in black woollen skirts with stacks of bangles running up the arm. With your naturalist translating, you sit with a family over a glass of sweet chai and hear how herding is changing now that grazing land is shrinking and younger people are moving to the towns for work. Photographs are welcome, but please ask first.

Later you drive to the Jawai Dam, built between 1946 and 1957 by Maharaja Umaid Singh of Jodhpur and still the largest reservoir in western Rajasthan. The lake supplies drinking water to Pali and nearby towns, and its shallow edges hold a healthy population of mugger crocodiles, often seen basking on the banks with their jaws open. In winter, from about November to February, the water draws bar-headed geese, demoiselle cranes, ruddy shelducks and, in some years, flamingos. Where water levels and local rules allow, a short boat ride brings you closer to the birds. You return to camp for lunch and a quiet afternoon of rest.

Your fourth and final leopard safari sets out at around 4 pm. By now you will know the names the naturalists use for certain cats and the hills they favour, and this last drive is often spent looking for a mother with cubs or a male that has stayed out of sight during your stay. Even if the leopards are shy, the ride back through the fields at dusk, with temple bells ringing from the hilltops and cattle dust hanging in the low sun, is one of the quietest moments of this jawai leopard safari tour. On request, the camp can set up your final dinner at a private spot for two. Overnight stay in Jawai.

After a relaxed breakfast you leave Jawai for Ranakpur, about 80 km and two hours away along country roads through the town of Sadri. The route climbs gradually into the western slopes of the Aravalli range, and the dry scrub gives way to greener woodland of teak, khejri and flame-of-the-forest trees. You can stop in a village along the way to watch a potter at his wheel or women carrying brass water pots home from the well. You check in at your resort in the Ranakpur valley before midday. Most properties here are low cottages set among gardens and mango trees, with a pool and the wooded hills of Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary rising behind.

The Chaumukha Jain Temple opens to non-Jain visitors from 12 noon to 5 pm, so your visit is planned for the early afternoon. Work on the temple began in the 1430s under Dharna Shah, a minister of Rana Kumbha of Mewar, who is said to have seen its plan in a dream; the architect Depaka spent around fifty years on the building. Made entirely of pale marble, it has 29 halls and 1,444 carved pillars, and no two are carved alike. An audio guide comes with the entry ticket. Leather items such as belts and wallets are not permitted, shoulders and knees should be covered, and shoes are left at the gate.

Inside, your guide points out the ceiling domes carved like hanging lotus flowers, and the marble panel of Parshvanath surrounded by 1,008 serpent heads whose tails knot together with no beginning or end. Local tradition says one pillar was left slightly tilted on purpose, since only the divine can be perfect. Sunlight enters through openings in the roof and moves across the white columns through the afternoon, so the halls look different every hour. Close by is the smaller Surya Narayan Temple, dedicated to the sun god, with carvings of horses and chariots. Back at the resort, the evening is free for a walk in the gardens or a swim. Overnight stay in Ranakpur.

This morning you drive south through the Aravalli hills to Udaipur, a journey of about 95 km that takes around two and a half hours. The road winds over small passes and through villages of the Mewar region, where houses are built of grey stone and farmers grow maize on narrow terraced plots. Your driver can stop at a village tea stall where the chai is boiled with ginger and cardamom, or at a lookout above the valley. As the road drops towards Udaipur, the first lakes come into view, along with the marble showrooms and craft workshops on the edge of the city. You check in at your lakeside or old-city hotel around lunchtime.

The afternoon starts with a gentle walk through the lanes of the old city near Gangaur Ghat with your local guide. Udaipur was founded in 1559 by Maharana Udai Singh II, after repeated attacks on the old Mewar capital at Chittorgarh made a safer site ringed by hills necessary. Your guide leads you past doorways painted with wedding announcements, small roadside shrines to Ganesh and studios where miniature painters still grind mineral colours and work with very fine squirrel-hair brushes. Nearby is Bagore ki Haveli, an eighteenth-century mansion on the water's edge, where a folk dance and puppet show is staged each evening (tickets extra).

Towards sunset you board a boat on Lake Pichola, a ride included in your package. From the water you see the City Palace stretching along the eastern bank, the white walls of the Lake Palace hotel on its island, and Jag Mandir, the garden palace where Prince Khurram, later Emperor Shah Jahan, took refuge in the 1620s. As the sky turns pink the ghats fill with people washing clothes, saying prayers and chatting at the water's edge. Couples may like to book a table for dinner at one of the rooftop restaurants around Ambrai Ghat, which look straight across to the palace lit up on the far shore. Overnight stay in Udaipur.

After breakfast your guide takes you into the City Palace, the largest palace complex in Rajasthan, built and extended by successive Maharanas over nearly four hundred years. You enter through the Tripolia Gate and climb through narrow, twisting stairways that were designed to slow down any attacker. Highlights inside include the Mor Chowk, where glass peacocks made from thousands of small coloured pieces decorate the walls, the mirrored rooms of the Manak Mahal and the Zenana Mahal, which now displays royal palanquins and howdahs. From the upper balconies the view over the lake and the surrounding hills makes clear why the Mewar rulers chose this site.

Just outside the palace gates stands the Jagdish Temple, built in 1651 by Maharana Jagat Singh I and dedicated to Lord Vishnu. A flight of steps guarded by stone elephants leads up to the main shrine, where a black stone image of Vishnu is worshipped with songs and bells several times a day. The outer walls are covered with carved dancers, musicians and horsemen. Later your driver takes you to Saheliyon ki Bari, the Garden of the Maidens, laid out in the eighteenth century for the royal ladies and their companions. Its fountains run on water pressure from Fateh Sagar Lake rather than pumps, and they still play in the lotus pools today.

The rest of the day is left open so that you can choose your own pace. Some couples book a cooking class with a local family to learn dal, a seasonal vegetable curry and fresh chapatis; others ride the cable car up to the Karni Mata temple for a wide view over the old city. For the last sunset of the tour, the Monsoon Palace on Sajjangarh hill, built in 1884, looks out across the lakes and the Aravalli ridges. Your driver stays with you until the evening for any of these plans. Please pack tonight, as tomorrow you fly back to Delhi. Overnight stay in Udaipur.

After breakfast and check-out, your driver transfers you to Udaipur's Maharana Pratap Airport, about 25 km and 40 minutes from the city, for your domestic flight to Delhi. Please note that the Udaipur–Delhi flight is not included in the package price; Payless Tours India can book it for you at the fare available on the day of booking. On landing in Delhi, our driver meets you and takes you to your hotel or directly to the international terminal for your flight home.