Palace on Wheels

The train is at Jaipur by morning. A Rajasthani welcome on the platform, then the city in one sweep — Albert Hall, the City Palace, Jantar Mantar and the honeycomb facade of the Hawa Mahal — with lunch at 1135 AD inside Amber Fort itself. The afternoon is the fort proper, and the bazaars before you are back aboard for a twenty-hundred departure.

A six o'clock start for the jeep safari into Ranthambore — once the Jaipur royal family's private hunting ground, now one of the surest places in India to see a tiger in the open. Breakfast is aboard as the train moves on, and by mid-afternoon you are at Chittorgarh, the largest fort in India and the most solemn: three sackings, three recorded jauhars, and a sound-and-light programme at six that does not flinch from any of it.

Into Udaipur by seven and out again by four, which is exactly enough if the day is run properly: Saheliyon ki Bari and the City Palace with its crystal gallery in the morning, lunch at Fateh Prakash on the lake, and then the part everyone remembers — the boat across Pichola to Jag Mandir, where high tea is served on the island 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 prince Khurram sheltered on.

Jaisalmer by nine, and the fort is the point: one of the very few living forts left anywhere, with a quarter of the old city's families still inside the twelfth-century walls. Gadisar Lake, the Patwon Ki HaveliHaveliA traditional townhouse or mansion built around one or more internal courtyards.Read in the glossary and Nathmal Ji Ki Haveli before lunch; camel safari on the Sam dunes at four; and dinner at Gorbandh Palace with a folk programme before a near-midnight departure for Jodhpur.

Mehrangarh stands a hundred and twenty metres above Jodhpur and has never been taken by siege — the morning is spent inside it, in the palanquin rooms and filigree windows, then Jaswant Thada's white marble and the Umaid Bhawan Palace. Lunch is at Ajit Bhawan. You are back aboard by four for a half-past-four departure, and the rest of the day is the train's.

An early call for Keoladeo at Bharatpur — a rickshaw safari through what was once a duke's shooting reserve and is now one of Asia's great wetlands, with some three hundred and eighty resident and migratory species. Breakfast aboard as the train runs to Agra, then the Fort before lunch and the Taj Mahal in the middle of the afternoon. The train leaves for Delhi at a quarter to nine.

The train draws into Safdarjung in the small hours and stands quietly at the platform while you sleep. Breakfast is at six, check-out formalities from half past seven, and you leave at your own pace — seven nights, eight cities and the whole of Rajasthan behind you, without having packed a suitcase once.