Rajasthan Forts & Palaces Tour – 12 Days

A representative of Payless Tours India meets you in the arrivals hall of Indira Gandhi International Airport, holding a board with your name, and walks you to the private air-conditioned car that will carry you across Rajasthan for the next eleven days. The transfer to your hotel takes forty minutes to an hour, depending on traffic and where you are staying. After check-in there is time to shower and rest, because a long-haul flight and the change of time zone are tiring. Your guide arrives in the early afternoon for a short briefing, going through the route, the forts you will see and the rough timings of each day.

The first stop is the Red Fort, built by Shah Jahan between 1638 and 1648 when he moved the Mughal capital from Agra to his new city of Shahjahanabad. You enter through the Lahori Gate, walk down the covered Chhatta Chowk bazaar and reach the Diwan-i-Am, where the emperor sat on a marble throne to hear petitions. Further in, the white Diwan-i-Khas once held the Peacock Throne, carried off to Persia by Nadir Shah in 1739. Your guide explains how this fort shaped the idea of a royal residence that Rajput rulers later copied. The Red Fort is closed on Mondays, so on that day Purana Qila, the sixteenth-century citadel of Humayun and Sher Shah Suri, takes its place.

Late in the afternoon you drive south to Humayun's Tomb, completed in 1570 and commissioned by the emperor's widow, Bega Begum. Its double dome, red sandstone frame and charbagh garden divided by water channels make it the first great garden tomb of the subcontinent and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The guide shows you the smaller tombs scattered around the grounds, including the octagonal tomb of Isa Khan, which is older than the main building. As light fades, you return to the hotel. Dinner is at your own choice, and an early night helps, because tomorrow begins with a long drive into Rajasthan.

Overnight stay in Delhi.

After breakfast you leave Delhi around eight o'clock, before the city traffic builds, and head south-west on the national highway towards Jaipur. The road passes the glass towers of Gurugram and the industrial belt around Manesar before the country opens into fields of wheat and mustard and the low brown line of the Aravalli hills. Around the halfway point you pass Neemrana, where a fifteenth-century fort has been turned into a hotel. Your driver will stop at a clean highway restaurant for tea and a break. The journey of about 280 km takes five to six hours, and you should reach Jaipur in the early afternoon, with time to check in and eat a light lunch.

In the afternoon your Jaipur guide takes you into the walled city that Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II laid out in 1727 on a grid of wide streets and square blocks. The City Palace sits at its centre, and part of it is still the home of the former royal family, whose flag flies above the Chandra Mahal when the head of the family is in residence. You walk through the Mubarak Mahal, now a textile gallery holding royal robes, and the Diwan-i-Khas, where two huge silver urns stand that carried Ganges water to London for Madho Singh II in 1902. The four painted gateways of the Pritam Niwas Chowk each stand for a season.

Next door lies Jantar Mantar, the astronomical observatory built by the same king between 1728 and 1734 and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its nineteen masonry instruments measured time, tracked stars and predicted eclipses, and the Samrat Yantra sundial rises 27 metres and reads local time to within about two seconds. Your guide shows how a scholar-king who also designed a city thought about precision. On the way back you stop on the road opposite Hawa Mahal, whose pink sandstone front of small latticed windows let the women of the court watch processions unseen. The evening is free for Johari Bazaar or a rooftop dinner.

Overnight stay in Jaipur.

This morning is given to the first of the four UNESCO-listed hill forts on your route. Amber Fort, eleven kilometres north of Jaipur, was the seat of the Kachhwaha clan for roughly six centuries before the capital moved down to the plain. In 2013 it was inscribed with Kumbhalgarh, Chittorgarh, Jaisalmer, Ranthambore and Gagron as the Hill Forts of Rajasthan, a group chosen because together they show how Rajput rulers used hills, rivers and desert ridges for defence. You arrive early, around half past eight, to avoid the tour coaches. The climb to the Suraj Pol gate can be made on foot along the stone ramp or by jeep.

Inside, the palace rises in four terraces. Raja Man Singh I, one of Akbar's leading generals, began the main building in the late sixteenth century, and Mirza Raja Jai Singh added the finest halls. The Ganesh Pol gateway is painted with floral designs in natural pigments, and beyond it lies the Sheesh Mahal, where convex mirror pieces set in plaster scatter the light of a single lamp across the whole ceiling. The guide also takes you to the Sukh Niwas, where water once ran through a channel in the wall to cool the room, and to the older zenana quarters of Man Singh, built around a courtyard with separate apartments for each of his queens.

A tunnel and a steep road link Amber with Jaigarh, the fortress on the ridge above, which was built to guard the palace and the royal treasury. Here you see the Jaivana, a cannon cast on the site in 1720 and long described as the largest on wheels anywhere in the world. Jaigarh never fell to an enemy, and its huge rock-cut water tanks could supply a garrison through a long siege. After lunch you can rest at the hotel or walk in the old city markets. Before sunset your driver takes you up to Nahargarh Fort, whose walls look straight down on the grid of Jaipur as the evening lights come on.

Overnight stay in Jaipur.

Today is the longest drive of the tour, so breakfast is early and you leave Jaipur by about eight. The first stretch follows the busy national highway west to Ajmer, about 135 km away, a city known for the shrine of the Sufi saint Moinuddin Chishti. Beyond Ajmer the road runs south through Beawar and Bhim, where the land becomes rockier and the Aravalli range closes in on both sides. Your driver knows the best stops for tea and a simple lunch of dal, roti and seasonal vegetables. The whole journey of roughly 360 km takes six and a half to seven hours, including breaks along the way.

The approach to Kumbhalgarh is part of its story. The last twenty kilometres climb through narrow valleys, past villages of the Garasia and Bhil communities, and the fort stays hidden by the folds of the hills until the final bends. This was deliberate. Rana Kumbha of Mewar built the fortress in the fifteenth century on a site that could not be seen from a distance, and the hills themselves formed the outer defence. Your hotel sits on the slopes below the walls, and many rooms look across forested valleys that belong to the Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary, home to leopards, sloth bears, wolves and a wide range of birds.

If you arrive by late afternoon, you can walk up to the fort for the evening sound and light show, held at the base of the walls after dark. It tells the history of Mewar in about an hour, from the building of the fort to the birth of Maharana Pratap, who was born inside these walls in 1540. The ramparts are floodlit afterwards, and the long line of lit stone running over the ridge gives you a first sense of their scale. Tickets for the show are paid locally. Dinner is at the hotel, which is the simplest option in a place with few restaurants.

Overnight stay in Kumbhalgarh.

An early start is worth the effort at Kumbhalgarh, the second UNESCO hill fort of the trip. You enter through the Ram Pol and climb past a series of gates to the Badal Mahal, the Palace of Clouds, built on the highest point of the fort at about 1,100 metres above sea level. Its rooms are decorated with pastel wall paintings of elephants and crocodiles, and the views from its terraces stretch to the sandy plains of Marwar on one side and the green hills of Mewar on the other. Your guide explains how Mewar and Marwar were rival kingdoms, and why this single fort watched over the border between them.

The outer wall, wide enough in places for several horses to ride side by side, is often called the second longest continuous wall in the world after the Great Wall of China. Inside it stand more than 300 temples, Jain and Hindu, many of them now roofless. The Neelkanth Mahadev temple, with its tall Shiva lingam and open pillared hall, is still in use. Kumbhalgarh fell only once, in 1578, when Mughal forces under Shahbaz Khan, a general of Akbar, besieged it and the defenders ran short of water. Your guide will show you the old tanks and reservoirs, and explain how a fort that could not be stormed was finally taken by thirst.

Around midday you drive east to Chittorgarh, about 170 km and three and a half to four hours, by way of Rajsamand, where an artificial lake built in the seventeenth century has carved marble ghats and pavilions known as the Nauchowki. It makes a good stop to stretch your legs. The road then crosses the open farmland of central Mewar, where wheat, maize and opium poppies are grown under government licence. You reach Chittorgarh in the late afternoon and check in at your hotel below the fort, which runs along the top of a long, flat-topped hill rising about 180 metres above the plain. The evening is free.

Overnight stay in Chittorgarh.

Often described as the largest fort in India by area, Chittorgarh is the third UNESCO hill fort on the route, and the morning here is the emotional centre of this Rajasthan forts and palaces tour. The road up passes through seven gates, from Padan Pol at the bottom to Ram Pol at the top, and your guide stops at the small memorials between them to Jaimal and Patta, two commanders who died defending the fort against Akbar in 1568. Chittor was besieged three times, in 1303, 1535 and 1567–68, and each time the women of the fort chose jauhar, death by fire, rather than capture. The site of those fires is still marked inside the walls.

Your walk then covers the main monuments. The Vijay Stambh, a nine-storey Tower of Victory built by Rana Kumbha to celebrate his win over the Sultan of Malwa in 1440, is carved from top to bottom with figures of Hindu gods, and you can climb its narrow inner stairs when it is open. Nearby stands the older Kirti Stambh, a twelfth-century Jain tower dedicated to Adinath. You also see the ruined palace of Rana Kumbha, the Meera temple linked with the poet-saint Meerabai, and the white palace of Rani Padmini beside a pool, whose story of Alauddin Khalji and a mirror reflection your guide will separate from the recorded facts.

After lunch you drive about 115 km to Udaipur, around two hours on a good four-lane highway. The land becomes greener as you approach the city of lakes, founded by Maharana Udai Singh II in 1559 in a sheltered valley behind the Aravallis. After Akbar's sack of Chittor in 1568 it became the permanent capital of Mewar, a link between the two cities that your Udaipur guide will return to tomorrow. You check in at your hotel by mid-afternoon, and the rest of the day is free. A sunset walk along Gangaur Ghat and the lanes near Lal Ghat is a gentle way to get your bearings.

Overnight stay in Udaipur.

The City Palace of Udaipur is not one building but a chain of palaces added by successive Maharanas over about three hundred years, all joined together along the eastern shore of Lake Pichola. Your guide meets you at the hotel after breakfast and you enter through the Badi Pol, the great gate built in 1600. Inside, the Mor Chowk courtyard is decorated with three peacocks made from thousands of small glass pieces in blue, green and gold. The Zenana Mahal, the queens' wing, has painted walls and a gallery of miniature paintings, and the Manak Mahal holds glass and mirror inlay. From the upper balconies you look straight down over the lake.

Close to the palace gate is the Jagdish Temple, built in 1651 by Maharana Jagat Singh I and still a busy place of worship. Steep steps lead to a shrine of Vishnu, with carved elephants, dancers and musicians around the outer walls. From here you can wander the old lanes towards Bagore ki Haveli, an eighteenth-century mansion on Gangaur Ghat that now houses a museum of costumes and household objects. In the afternoon you take a boat ride on Lake Pichola, passing the white Lake Palace hotel and stopping at Jag Mandir island, where the young prince Khurram, later Shah Jahan, sheltered in the 1620s while in revolt against his father Jahangir.

Late in the day your driver takes you up to the Sajjangarh Monsoon Palace, built in 1884 on a hilltop about five kilometres west of the city by Maharana Sajjan Singh, who wanted to watch the monsoon clouds gather over the hills. The road passes through a small wildlife reserve, and the terrace at the top is the best place in Udaipur to watch the sun set over the lakes and the Aravalli ridges. Afterwards you may attend the evening show of Rajasthani folk dance at Bagore ki Haveli, held most nights around seven, with tickets paid at the door. Dinner is at your own choice.

Overnight stay in Udaipur.

You leave Udaipur after breakfast and drive north into the hills on the road to Jodhpur, about 250 km and six to seven hours including a long stop on the way. The route climbs through the Aravalli range, past terraced fields, mango groves and villages where women in bright odhnis carry water on their heads. After about two and a half hours you reach Ranakpur, set in a quiet wooded valley beside the Maghai river. This stop is for architecture rather than defence, but it belongs to the same age as Kumbhalgarh, because the main temple was built in the reign of Rana Kumbha with land and support from the Mewar court.

The Chaumukha temple, dedicated to Adinath, the first Jain tirthankara, was begun in 1437 by a merchant named Dharna Shah. It is built of pale marble and is said to have 1,444 carved pillars, no two of them alike. Light falls into the halls from openings between the domes and changes the colour of the stone through the day. Non-Jain visitors may enter from around midday to five in the afternoon, and leather items, including belts and bags, must be left outside. Your guide or the temple's own audio guide explains the carvings, including a marble panel of Parshvanatha shaded by the hoods of a coiled serpent with 1,008 heads.

After a vegetarian lunch at a restaurant near the temple, you continue north-west through Sadri and Pali, where the hills fall away and the landscape turns flat and dry. This is Marwar, the land of the Rathores, and the village houses gradually give way to the sandstone and blue lime-washed walls of Jodhpur. You reach the city in the late afternoon or early evening and check in at your hotel. If there is light left, your driver can take you to the Clock Tower and Sardar Market, where spice sellers, cloth merchants and tea stalls crowd the old square below the fort.

Overnight stay in Jodhpur.

Mehrangarh is not part of the UNESCO group, but many historians rank it as the most complete fortress-palace in Rajasthan. Rao Jodha founded it in 1459 on a rocky hill called Bhakurcheeria, the mountain of birds, and its walls rise in places about 36 metres straight out of the rock. You enter through the Jai Pol, built by Maharaja Man Singh to mark a victory over the armies of Jaipur and Bikaner in 1806, and climb past the Loha Pol, where small handprints carved in the stone record the queens who committed sati on the funeral pyre of Maharaja Man Singh in 1843. Your guide tells their story and what it reveals about court life.

The museum inside the fort is run by the Mehrangarh Museum Trust and is one of the best organised in India. Its galleries hold elephant howdahs in silver and gilded wood, palanquins used by royal women, a large collection of turbans, and an armoury with swords, shields and daggers, some of them once owned by Mughal emperors. The palace rooms are just as rewarding. The Moti Mahal, the Pearl Palace, was the hall of public audience, while the Phool Mahal, built in the eighteenth century, is painted in gold and coloured panels showing musical ragas and portraits of rulers. From the Chamunda temple at the end of the ramparts you look over the blue houses.

Below the fort stands Jaswant Thada, a white marble memorial built in 1899 for Maharaja Jaswant Singh II, with thin marble sheets in its windows that glow when the sun shines through them. Small cenotaphs of later rulers stand around it in a garden above a lake. In the afternoon you visit the museum wing of the Umaid Bhawan Palace, completed in 1943 and among the last great palaces built in India. One part is still the home of the former royal family, one part is a hotel, and the third shows vintage clocks, photographs and classic cars. The evening is free in the old city.

Overnight stay in Jodhpur.

After breakfast you leave Jodhpur on the road west to Jaisalmer, about 285 km and roughly five hours of driving. The country becomes emptier as you go, with stretches of scrub, khejri trees and grazing goats, and the occasional camel cart moving along the edge of the road. Around the halfway point you reach Pokhran, best known today for India's nuclear tests of 1974 and 1998, but also home to a small red sandstone fort built in the fourteenth century. If time allows, your driver can stop for a short visit, as part of the fort is now a heritage hotel with a small museum of local arms and household goods.

Further on, wind turbines line the horizon and the first low dunes appear beside the road. You reach Jaisalmer in the early afternoon, and the first view of the fort is one of the best moments of the trip. Its 99 bastions sit on the Trikuta hill, and in the afternoon light the yellow sandstone takes on the colour of honey, which is why it is called Sonar Qila, the Golden Fort. Rawal Jaisal, a Bhati Rajput chief, founded it in 1156, and for centuries the town grew rich by taxing the camel caravans that crossed the Thar between India, Persia and Central Asia, carrying spices, silk and opium.

After check-in and a rest, your guide takes you in the late afternoon to Gadisar Lake, a reservoir built in the fourteenth century that once supplied the whole town with water. Small temples and chhatris stand on its banks and in the water, and the carved Tilon ki Pol gate is said to have been built by a courtesan named Tilon, who added a Krishna temple on top so that the king could not tear it down. Before sunset you drive to Vyas Chhatri, a group of sandstone cenotaphs on a rise near the town, where local musicians often play as the sun drops behind the fort.

Overnight stay in Jaisalmer.

Jaisalmer Fort is the fourth UNESCO hill fort of your trip and the only one where people still live inside the walls. Around 3,000 residents occupy houses, shops, temples and small guesthouses within its narrow lanes, which is why it is called a living fort. You enter in the morning through the Akhai Pol and climb through the Suraj Pol, Ganesh Pol and Hawa Pol to the main square, the Dussehra Chowk. Here stands the Raj Mahal, the seven-storey palace of the Maharawals, now a museum with carved stone balconies, royal portraits and a view over the rooftops of the town to the desert beyond.

Inside the fort is a group of seven Jain temples built between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries in yellow sandstone, with carvings as fine as many found in marble. They are usually open to visitors in the morning only, and leather items must be left outside. Your guide also explains the problem facing the fort today: water from modern plumbing seeps into the foundations and weakens the old walls. Leaving the fort, you walk through the lanes to Patwon ki Haveli, a cluster of five merchant mansions built in the early nineteenth century by Guman Chand Patwa for his sons, with stone screens so finely cut they look like lace.

After lunch there is time for Nathmal ki Haveli, carved by two brothers who each worked on one half of the façade, so the two sides match in plan but differ in detail. Later in the afternoon you drive about 6 km north to Bada Bagh, a hillside of royal cenotaphs built over several centuries for the rulers of Jaisalmer, then continue to Kuldhara, about 18 km south-west of town, a Paliwal Brahmin village abandoned in the early nineteenth century. Your guide shares the local accounts of why the families left in a single night. Return to Jaisalmer for a farewell dinner of your choice.

Overnight stay in Jaisalmer.

After breakfast, your driver transfers you to Jaisalmer airport, about twenty minutes from town, for your included domestic flight to Delhi of around one and a half hours. Flights from Jaisalmer run on a limited schedule, so if no suitable flight operates on your date, we drive you to Jodhpur airport and you fly from there instead. On arrival in Delhi you are met and taken to your hotel or the international terminal for your onward flight, which ends your Rajasthan forts and palaces tour with Payless Tours India.