Rajasthan Lakes & Hills Tour

A representative of Payless Tours India waits outside the arrivals hall of Indira Gandhi International Airport with a sign showing your name, helps with luggage and, if needed, points you to a counter for a local SIM card or currency exchange. The drive to your hotel in central Delhi takes forty-five minutes to an hour, depending on traffic. Standard check-in is usually early afternoon, so if your flight lands at night or at dawn we can reserve the room from the previous evening and you can go straight to bed. Nothing is planned for the morning, and we suggest a proper meal and a few hours of sleep after the long flight before going anywhere.

Around four o'clock, once the heat has dropped, your Delhi guide collects you for a short visit to Humayun's Tomb, built in the 1560s for the second Mughal emperor and commissioned by his widow, Bega Begum. The paths through its square garden are wide and level, which makes it one of the easiest monuments in the city for slow walkers. Your guide explains how the red sandstone walls, the white marble dome, the raised platform and the four-part garden set a pattern that Shah Jahan's builders refined at Agra some seventy years later. Benches beside the water channels let you sit for a while and study the proportions without any hurry.

Next door is Sunder Nursery, a sixteenth-century Mughal garden restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and reopened in 2018 as a ninety-acre park with ponds, flower beds and small tombs. A twenty-minute stroll there before sunset is a calm first look at the city, far from the traffic of Connaught Place. You are back at the hotel by early evening, where your guide runs through the plan for the coming days, notes any medicines, diet or mobility points, and hands over a printed itinerary with all the phone numbers you will need. Dinner is your own choice, and the hotel can suggest a quiet restaurant nearby. Overnight in Delhi.

After breakfast you leave Delhi around nine o'clock, when the worst of the morning rush towards Gurugram has passed. The route follows National Highway 48 south-west through the industrial belt of Haryana and into the low Aravalli hills. Your driver stops roughly every ninety minutes at highway restaurants with clean toilets, so nobody sits in one position for too long. There is space in the car for a cushion or a neck pillow, and you can ask for the air-conditioning to be raised or lowered at any time. Bottled water is kept in the vehicle for the whole trip, and the driver is happy to buy fresh fruit from roadside stalls.

After the state border near Shahjahanpur, the land around you begins to change. In winter there are yellow mustard fields on both sides of the road; at other times you see camel carts loaded with fodder, women in bright head scarves carrying brass water pots, and small watchtowers on the ridges. Your driver knows this highway well and can point out the Neemrana fort-palace on its hillside as you pass. Lunch is normally taken about two thirds of the way, at a family dhaba or highway restaurant where dal, roti, paneer and seasonal vegetables are cooked to order, and the kitchen will cut back on chilli if you ask.

You reach Jaipur in the middle of the afternoon and check in, with the rest of the day left free. The capital of Rajasthan was founded in 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II and laid out on a grid of wide streets, which makes it easier to drive around than most older Indian cities. For a gentle evening, ask the driver to take you past the Albert Hall Museum, an Indo-Saracenic building opened in 1887 that is floodlit after dark, and on to Birla Mandir, a white marble temple at the foot of Moti Dungri hill. Both can be enjoyed from the car or with a very short walk. Overnight in Jaipur.

The day starts at about half past eight, ahead of both the heat and the coach groups. Amber Fort stands eleven kilometres north of the city on a ridge above Maota Lake, whose still water reflects the yellow walls on calm mornings. Rather than climbing the long cobbled ramp, you ride up by jeep to the main courtyard. Inside, your guide leads you slowly through the Diwan-i-Aam, the painted Ganesh Pol gateway and the Sheesh Mahal, the mirrored hall added by Mirza Raja Jai Singh I in the seventeenth century. There are several flights of steps inside the palace, but any section can be skipped and viewed from a lower terrace instead.

Heading back towards the city, the car pulls over beside Man Sagar Lake for a view of Jal Mahal, a low sandstone palace that seems to rest on the water. It was built in the eighteenth century as a retreat for royal duck shoots, and when the lake is full its lower floors sit below the surface, so only the top storey and its corner domes are visible. A paved promenade with benches runs along the shore, and in winter you may spot herons and visiting ducks. Lunch is at a restaurant in town, and we recommend returning to the hotel afterwards for an hour of rest before the afternoon visits.

Around four o'clock you enter the walled Pink City. At the City Palace, part of which is still home to the former royal family, your guide shows you the Mubarak Mahal with its costume gallery, the Diwan-i-Khas with two huge silver water jars taken to England in 1902, and the courtyard of Pritam Niwas Chowk, where four painted doorways each stand for a season of the year. From there the car moves on to Hawa Mahal, whose pink front is covered in small latticed windows; a rooftop café across the street gives you a level view of the facade over a cup of masala tea. Overnight in Jaipur.

After a late and unhurried breakfast, you set off for Pushkar, about three hours away on a smooth four-lane highway. Shortly before Ajmer the road passes Kishangarh, a town known for its marble trade, where yards beside the highway are stacked with white and green slabs waiting for buyers from across India. Beyond Ajmer the car climbs over Nag Pahar, the Snake Mountain ridge that separates the two towns, with a view back over Ana Sagar, a lake created by a dam in the twelfth century. As you come down the far side, the whitewashed houses and temple spires of Pushkar appear around their small lake.

After check-in and a light lunch, your local guide walks with you to the water. The lake is ringed by 52 ghats, broad stone steps where pilgrims bathe, and Hindu tradition says it formed where a lotus dropped by Lord Brahma touched the ground. Shoes are left at the top of each ghat. Priests may offer to perform a short puja for a donation; your guide will explain how this works so that you can accept or decline politely. You then visit the Brahma Temple, one of very few in India dedicated to the creator god, its red spire reached by a short flight of marble steps. Meat, eggs and alcohol are not served anywhere in town.

As evening falls, the bells start ringing and lamps are lit on the main ghats for aarti, the daily prayer offered to the lake. Your guide finds a spot where you can sit on the steps and watch the priests swing their brass lamps while the reflections spread across the water. Many Pushkar hotels have rooftop terraces facing the lake, which are pleasant for a simple vegetarian dinner afterwards. Each autumn the town hosts the Pushkar Fair around Kartik Purnima, with dates that move every year with the lunar calendar, so please let us know early if your trip falls close to it, as rooms fill quickly. Overnight in Pushkar.

Early risers can walk down to the ghats at dawn, when the lake is at its quietest and pilgrims arrive with flowers and small clay lamps to float on the water. There is no need to join this, as breakfast is served until late and the drive does not start until around nine. Your route heads south through Beawar and along the Aravalli range, a road in good condition that runs past wheat and maize farms, stone quarries and villages where the walls of the houses are painted with lime and ochre. Your driver will plan two comfortable breaks before lunch, including one at a highway café with a shaded garden.

Around midday you reach Rajsamand Lake at Kankroli, about sixty-five kilometres before Udaipur, and stop for a short walk on its embankment. The lake was built in the 1670s by Maharana Raj Singh I partly as famine relief, giving work to thousands of villagers during a drought. Its Nauchowki embankment is lined with marble pavilions, carved archways and steps leading down to the water, and the walls carry a long Sanskrit poem about the history of Mewar cut into twenty-five stone slabs. Your driver can park close to the steps, so the walk is short, and there are shaded pavilions where you can sit and look across the lake.

You arrive in Udaipur by mid-afternoon and check in at a hotel near Lake Pichola, if possible one with a terrace or a room facing the water. After a rest, a short drive takes you to Gangaur Ghat, the old bathing steps beside Bagore ki Haveli, where locals gather in the evening to feed pigeons and watch the light fade over the hills. Across the water you can see the cream walls of the City Palace and the floodlit Lake Palace hotel on its island. Dinner can be booked at a lakeside restaurant in the Ambrai or Lal Ghat area, where a table by the water is worth reserving in advance. Overnight in Udaipur.

Your Udaipur guide meets you after breakfast for a morning at the City Palace, the largest palace complex in Rajasthan, which was started in 1559 by Maharana Udai Singh II and extended by his successors over the next three centuries. Behind its long facade sit several separate palaces joined by narrow corridors and stairways, built that way to slow down any attackers. Inside, the museum rooms include the Mor Chowk courtyard with its peacocks made of coloured glass mosaic, the Krishna Vilas with miniature paintings, and balconies looking over the lake. The route does involve steep steps, and your guide will show you where to rest or which sections to leave out.

A short walk downhill brings you to Jagdish Temple, built in 1651 by Maharana Jagat Singh I and dedicated to Lord Vishnu. A flight of thirty-two steps, guarded by two stone elephants, leads to the shrine, and the outer walls are carved with dancers, musicians and processions of elephants. If the steps are too much, you can see the carvings from street level while your guide describes the inner sanctum. Lunch is at a café in the old city lanes, where shops sell miniature paintings, silver jewellery and block-printed cotton. You then return to the hotel for a long rest before the late-afternoon outing on the water.

Around four o'clock you board a boat on Lake Pichola, an artificial lake first dug in 1362 by a grain trader named Pichhu Banjara and later enlarged by the Maharanas. The boat glides past the bathing ghats, washing steps and old havelis before stopping at Jag Mandir, an island palace where Prince Khurram, later Emperor Shah Jahan, sheltered in the 1620s after rebelling against his father. You have time to walk its garden and sit in the shade of the marble pavilions. On the return the sun drops behind the hills, and the palace walls turn from cream to deep orange as you come back to the jetty. Overnight in Udaipur.

This is the slowest day of the tour, starting with a late breakfast and a short drive north to Saheliyon ki Bari, the Garden of the Maidens. It was laid out in the eighteenth century by Maharana Sangram Singh II for the ladies of the royal household, who came here to stroll and bathe away from the court. Its lawns are level and shaded by old trees, with marble elephants spouting water, a lotus pool and a rain fountain that sprays fine mist from a canopy of stone. The gardens are small enough to walk round in half an hour, and there are plenty of benches under the trees.

From the garden it is only a few minutes to Fateh Sagar Lake, first built in 1678 and rebuilt in the 1880s by Maharana Fateh Singh after floods broke the original dam. A broad promenade runs along its eastern shore, lined with stalls selling roasted corn, coconut water and tea, and on the hill above stands a memorial to Maharana Pratap with a bronze statue of his horse Chetak. Small boats run to Nehru Park on an island in the middle of the lake, which takes about twenty minutes there and back. Another island holds the Udaipur Solar Observatory, set up on the water because the lake helps keep the air steady for viewing the sun.

After lunch and a rest at the hotel, your driver takes you up to Sajjangarh, the Monsoon Palace, built in 1884 by Maharana Sajjan Singh on a hilltop west of the city. The car drives most of the way up through a small wildlife sanctuary, leaving only a short walk to the terraces. From here you look down on Lake Pichola, Fateh Sagar and the whole valley as the sun goes down behind the Aravallis. If you still have energy afterwards, the Dharohar folk dance show at Bagore ki Haveli starts at seven o'clock and lasts about an hour, with puppets and the famous dance of women balancing pots on their heads. Overnight in Udaipur.

You leave Udaipur after breakfast for the only hill station in Rajasthan, about three and a half hours away. The highway runs south-west through the green hills of southern Mewar, past mango orchards and tribal villages, to the town of Abu Road at the foot of the mountain. From there a twenty-eight-kilometre road climbs in steady bends through a forested wildlife sanctuary, rising to about 1,220 metres. If anyone in your group suffers from motion sickness, tell your driver before the climb starts and he will take it slowly with a stop at the halfway viewpoint. You check in at your hotel in time for lunch.

At about two o'clock you visit the Dilwara Jain temples, which are open to visitors who are not Jain only from midday until evening. From the outside the buildings look plain, but inside the white marble is carved so finely that some ceilings look almost like lace. Vimal Vasahi, dedicated to the first Jain tirthankara, was built in 1031 by Vimal Shah, a minister of the Solanki rulers of Gujarat, while Luna Vasahi was added in 1230 by the brothers Vastupal and Tejpal. Cameras, phones and leather items must be left at the entrance, shoulders and knees should be covered, and the floors are flat and easy to walk on.

In the late afternoon your guide takes you to Nakki Lake, a small lake surrounded by hills and odd-shaped rocks at the centre of the town. Legend says the gods dug it with their fingernails, or nakh, which gives the lake its name. A level path runs along much of the shore, and rowing boats and pedal boats can be hired by the hour. From the lakeside you can see Toad Rock, a boulder shaped like a frog about to jump into the water. For sunset, Sunset Point is a short drive away, with hand-pushed carts available for the last slope for anyone who would rather not walk. Overnight in Mount Abu.

The morning is free for a final walk by Nakki Lake while the air is still cool and the boatmen are just setting out. If you would like to see more of the hill, Guru Shikhar, the highest point of the Aravalli range at 1,722 metres, lies fifteen kilometres from town and gives wide views over the plains of Rajasthan and Gujarat. The last part involves around three hundred steps to a small temple, so many travellers stay at the lower viewpoint and enjoy the view from there. Your guide can also suggest the Mount Abu Museum or a stroll through the town market for local spices and shawls.

After an early lunch you drive down the mountain to Abu Road and turn north through Pindwara and Sadri, crossing the hills that divide Marwar from Mewar. This part of Rajasthan is greener than many visitors expect, with eucalyptus and khejri trees, small reservoirs and farms worked by Rabari herders who still wear white tunics and red turbans. The famous Jain temple at Ranakpur lies near this road, and if the group wishes, a short stop can be added there instead of a tea break. Otherwise your driver continues through the forest of the Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary, where you may see langur monkeys sitting by the roadside.

You arrive at your resort near Kumbhalgarh by late afternoon. Most hotels here are low-rise properties with gardens and views of the hills, and some have rooms on the ground floor, which we request for our senior guests. After sunset, your driver takes you to the fort gate for the sound-and-light show, which tells the story of the fort and its rulers in Hindi while the walls and temples are lit in changing colours. Your guide will sit with you and translate the main points. The show lasts about forty-five minutes, and you are back at the hotel for dinner soon after. Overnight in Kumbhalgarh.

After breakfast you return to the fort for a guided visit in daylight. Kumbhalgarh was built between 1443 and 1458 by Rana Kumbha of Mewar, working with the architect Mandan, on a hilltop more than 1,000 metres above sea level. Its outer wall runs for about thirty-six kilometres over the ridges, among the longest continuous walls in the world, and in places it is wide enough for several horses to ride side by side. The fort is one of six Hill Forts of Rajasthan listed by UNESCO in 2013, and it is also the birthplace of Maharana Pratap, the Mewar ruler who resisted the Mughal emperor Akbar.

From the entrance a level section of the wall near Ram Pol lets you walk along the top for a few hundred metres, looking down over the forest and the hills that stretch towards Marwar. Inside the walls stand the ruins of more than three hundred Hindu and Jain temples. The Neelkanth Mahadev temple, built in 1458, holds a tall black stone Shiva lingam and is still used for worship. The climb to Badal Mahal, the Palace of the Clouds at the top, is steep and rocky; those who prefer to skip it can rest at the temples while the rest of the group goes up.

Around midday you start the drive to Jodhpur, heading west through Desuri and the market town of Pali before reaching the edge of the Thar Desert. The hills fall away, the land becomes flat and sandy, and herds of goats and sheep graze near the road. A lunch stop is made on the way, and you reach Jodhpur by late afternoon. Your hotel is close to the old city, with the walls of Mehrangarh Fort visible above. If you still feel like going out, your driver can take you to the Clock Tower and Sardar Market for an evening walk among spice stalls and blue-washed houses. Overnight in Jodhpur.

Your last morning starts with a visit to Mehrangarh Fort, founded in 1459 by Rao Jodha on a rocky hill about 125 metres above the city. Instead of climbing the ramp through its seven gates, you take the lift from the lower area to the upper palace, which saves a long steep walk. Your guide still shows you the Jai Pol gate, where marks left by cannon balls fired during an eighteenth-century siege can still be seen, and the handprints of royal women carved beside the Loha Pol. From the walls you can look down at the blue houses of Brahmpuri, the old Brahmin quarter of the city.

The fort museum is one of the best kept in India. You move through the Moti Mahal, where the ceiling is decorated with gold leaf and glass, and the Phool Mahal, a hall painted with flowers and portraits used for royal dances. Galleries show silver elephant seats, palanquins, weapons and textiles that belonged to the Rathore rulers. On the way down, the car stops at Jaswant Thada, a white marble cenotaph built in 1899 in memory of Maharaja Jaswant Singh II. Its thin marble walls glow when the sun shines through them, and a small lake and garden in front offer a final peaceful corner of Rajasthan.

After lunch, your driver takes you to Jodhpur Airport, about fifteen minutes from the city, for your included economy flight to Delhi, which takes around one hour and twenty minutes. Please keep checked luggage within the airline's allowance, as weights on domestic flights are lower than on many international routes. On arrival in Delhi, a Payless Tours India representative meets you at the domestic terminal and transfers you to your hotel or to the international terminal for your onward flight. This is where our services end, and we wish you a safe and restful journey home at the end of your Rajasthan lakes tour.