Beyond the Fort Walls

The morning belongs to imperial Delhi — India Gate, and Humayun's Tomb, the MughalMughalRelating to the Muslim dynasty of Central Asian descent that ruled most of the subcontinent from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.Read in the glossary masterpiece that rehearsed the argument the Taj would later perfect. By afternoon the register changes entirely: Chandni Chowk by cycle rickshaw, the spice market, and Paranthe Wali Gali, where the same kitchens have been frying the same stuffed breads for generations. The contrast is the point.

The Gatimaan Express leaves Delhi in the morning and reaches Agra in a little over ninety minutes — air-conditioned, unhurried, breakfast served at the seat, mustard fields at the window in winter. The afternoon is Agra Fort, which is the more interesting building of the two the city is known for: a working seat of empire where Shah Jahan was later held prisoner within sight of the tomb he built. At dusk, Mehtab Bagh across the river, where the Taj is seen from the garden it was designed to be seen from.

You reach the gate before dawn. The marble takes the light slowly — silver, then a faint apricot, then white — and the water channels hold the whole building twice. The crowds are gentler at this hour and the air is cooler; the difference between this and a midday visit is not marginal. Breakfast follows at the hotel. Later, the inlay workshops, where the same pietra duraPietra duraThe inlay of cut and polished coloured stones into marble to form a design.Read in the glossary technique is still cut by hand, and on to Bharatpur.

Keoladeo is explored by cycle rickshaw with a naturalistNaturalistThe trained wildlife guide who accompanies guests on safari, reading tracks, alarm calls and behaviour to find animals.Read in the glossary, which is the right speed for it — mist over the marshes, the reeds moving, and a density of birdlife that rewards patience rather than distance. On the road to Jaipur, Chand BaoriStepwellA well reached by a long descending staircase, so that water can still be drawn as the water table falls.Read in the glossary at Abhaneri: thirteen storeys of stairs descending into the earth in a geometry that still looks impossible, built when water was the most valuable thing a village owned.

The balloon lifts before the city is properly awake. From the basket Amber Fort resolves along the ridge, Maota Lake goes to polished silver, and beyond the monuments you see the ordinary morning beginning in the villages. Back on the ground and after breakfast: Amber Fort itself, the Jal Mahal and Hawa Mahal, and a walk through the old city's bazaars. The evening brings a private puppet performance — Rajasthan's oldest travelling art form, played close.

The drive south leaves the plains for the Aravalli hills. Deogarh Mahal is a seventeenth-century palace still occupied by the family that built it, which changes the texture of a stay here entirely — you are a guest in a house, not a customer in a hotel. The evening is deliberately unstructured.

The morning is the palace: corridors of family portraits, stairs to rooftop terraces, frescoes and jharokhasJharokhaAn enclosed balcony window projecting from an upper wall, carved and canopied, from which those inside could watch the street unseen.Read in the glossary kept rather than restored. At half past ten you transfer to Khamlighat and board the narrow-gauge line to Phulad — about eighty minutes of nineteenth-century railway through hills, arched bridges and hamlets, with langursLangurThe grey, black-faced, long-tailed monkey of the Indian forest and temple town.Read in the glossary along the track. The afternoon returns to the palace and to rest.

The Sas Bahu temples stand above Bagela Lake — tenth century, comparatively unvisited, and carved to a fineness that reads as lace where it should read as stone. The domed ceiling of the mandap is the reason to make the stop. Udaipur follows in the afternoon.

The City Palace rises straight from the water and unfolds inward through courtyards, mirrored chambers and glass mosaic — Rajput structure with Mughal manners. The afternoon is Saheliyon Ki Bari, built as a retreat for the women of the court, with its lotus pools and fountains. At the end of the day a private boat on Lake Pichola, when the Lake Palace appears to float and the light goes rose and gold across the water.

Ranakpur is reached through a wooded valley and is, by most measures, the finest Jain temple in India: a forest of 1,444 marble columns, each carved differently, holding a roof that seems to weigh nothing. You continue to Narlai, a village beneath a granite monolith. Dinner is served in a centuries-old stepwell lit by hundreds of oil lamps — the single most photographed thing this house arranges, and worth the reputation.

A short drive brings you into the Jawai and Bera country — granite outcrops rising out of scrub, ancient shrines scattered across the hillsides, and one of the densest leopard populations in India living quite openly alongside the villages. The afternoon is spent with Rabari shepherds: an indigenous herding caste, the men in white with red turbans and silver, moving cattle and camels as they have for centuries. It is not a performance arranged for visitors; it is simply what happens here.

Out before first light in an open jeep. The trackers read pugmarks, langur alarm calls and movement on the rocks; the leopards here use the hills and the temple ruins with complete confidence. After breakfast the road turns north to Jodhpur, with a stop at the Bullet Baba shrine on the Pali highway — a temple built around a Royal Enfield 350, garlanded and glassed, tended by truck drivers and villagers. India does not always explain itself.

Mehrangarh stands four hundred feet above the city on sheer rock and is among the best-kept forts in India — the museum inside it is genuinely good, which is rarer than it should be. Afterwards a walking tour of the blue quarter directly beneath the walls, where the indigo wash on the houses has practical origins and a striking cumulative effect.

The road west empties out. Khejri trees, mud houses with thatch, shepherds and camels, and a sky that grows steadily larger. Then Jaisalmer lifts out of the horizon in honey-coloured sandstone. The evening brings a private performance by musicians of the Thar — Manganiar and Langa traditions, played on instruments most audiences never see.

Jaisalmer Fort is one of the very few forts anywhere still inhabited — some four thousand people live inside the walls, which makes walking it an act of moving through a town rather than a monument. Within it, the Jain temples; below it, Patwon Ki Haveli, five merchant mansions of extravagant filigree. Gadisar Lake at the end of the afternoon. The evening is spent cooking with a priest's family in the old city — strictly vegetarian, entirely home-taught: dal baati, gatte ki sabzi, rabodi, breads over open flame, eaten together afterwards.

A long, open drive through the desert heartland — arid plains, scattered dunes, grazing camels, and villages where the pace has not changed much. It is a transfer, but the landscape does the work.

Junagarh is unusual among Rajasthan's forts in standing on flat ground rather than a hilltop, and more unusual in never having been taken. Built in 1593 by Raja Rai Singh, a general of Akbar's, its severity outside conceals rooms of considerable delicacy. The afternoon drive reaches Mandawa, in the Shekhawati.

Shekhawati was made rich by Marwari merchants on the caravan routes, and they spent it on their houses — frescoes across entire façades, courtyards and jharokhas, mythology beside royal processions beside, occasionally, a painted motor car or gramophone as the modern world arrived. Mandawa and Nawalgarh are walked slowly, including private mansions not generally opened.

After breakfast, the drive to Delhi International for onward flights. Departures after 7 pm allow the transfer to be made without hurry; where an earlier flight or a final night in the capital suits better, we arrange a hotel near the airport.