Romantic Rajasthan: 11 slow days for two
Built on the principle that a honeymoon is not a sightseeing trip. Three hotel changes in eleven days, no drive longer than three hours, nothing scheduled before nine in the morning, and four days with nothing in them at all.
- Duration
- 11 days
- Pace
- Slow
- Hotel changes
- 3
- Best months
- Oct, Nov, Dec, Feb, Mar
- From
- $4,350 per person
It stays in southern Rajasthan, which is the green half: lakes, marble hills and the Aravalli range rather than desert. That choice is what keeps the driving short.
Who it suits: honeymoons, anniversaries and anyone who would rather see three places properly than seven from a car window.
Your specialist: your named India specialist, with our Delhi office on the ground throughout.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive Delhi. A good hotel near the airport or in the quiet diplomatic quarter, depending on your arrival time. No sightseeing. Delhi is a transit point on this trip and we are honest about that.
Day 2: Fly to Udaipur. Ninety minutes. Afternoon arrival at a lake hotel, and the rest of the day is yours. Dinner on a terrace with the City Palace lit up across the water.
Day 3: Udaipur, the palace and the lake. The City Palace with a guide before the day visitors arrive, the courtyards and mirrored rooms of the Zenana, then a private boat on Lake Pichola in the last hour of light.
Day 4: Udaipur, free. Nothing scheduled. A spa afternoon, the miniature painting studios in the old city, Monsoon Palace on the ridge at sunset, or a full day of doing none of it.
Day 5: Udaipur, free. Also nothing scheduled. Our document offers the Aravalli hills, the temples at Eklingji and Nagda, a private cooking session in a family home, or a boat and a book.
Day 6: Udaipur to Narlai. Three hours north into the granite hills, with a stop at Ranakpur, a 15th century Jain temple in white marble with more than 1,400 carved pillars, no two alike. Narlai is a village of about 4,000 people beneath a single vast granite outcrop, and the hotel is a converted royal hunting lodge.
Day 7: Narlai. Leopards at dawn in the boulder fields, which are genuinely present here and reasonably often seen. A village walk in the afternoon, tea with a Rabari shepherd family, and dinner by candlelight in a 1,000-step stepwell, which is the single most photographed dinner in Rajasthan and is better than it sounds.
Day 8: Narlai to Jodhpur. Two and a half hours. Afternoon free, then the rooftops of the old city at sunset with the fort above you.
Day 9: Jodhpur, Mehrangarh. The best fort in India, opened for you at the hour before the public arrives if we can secure it, and a guide who deals in the history rather than the trivia. Afternoon at the Toorji stepwell and the blue lanes below the walls.
Day 10: Jodhpur, free. A morning with the Bishnoi villages and the block printers and potters who work in them, or a hot air balloon over the fort at dawn, or nothing. Last dinner on a rooftop.
Day 11: Departure. Morning flight Jodhpur to Delhi and your international connection.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast throughout, a private air-conditioned car and driver on the road legs, both internal flights, all transfers, three half-days of private guiding, the private boat on Lake Pichola, two leopard drives at Narlai, the stepwell dinner, all entries, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Delhi office.
Upgrades worth considering, and one that is not
Worth it. A lake-facing suite in Udaipur rather than a garden room, because the view is the entire point of the city. A private car and guide at Mehrangarh before opening. A night at Narlai in the tented suite rather than the main house.
Sometimes worth it. The Taj Lake Palace, on its own island in Pichola, is a genuinely remarkable hotel and costs roughly three times a very good lake-view room a few hundred yards away. Some couples think that is the right trade. We price both and let you decide rather than steering you.
Not worth it, in our view. Umaid Bhawan in Jodhpur is a magnificent building and much of it is still a private residence. The public parts are grand and slightly remote from the city you came to see. We would spend the difference on two more nights.
The honest part
There is no Taj Mahal on this itinerary. That is deliberate: Agra is a four-hour drive or a flight plus a drive from anywhere on this route, and slotting it in costs two travel days out of eleven. If the Taj is not negotiable, this becomes a thirteen-day trip and we build it that way rather than pretending the days are free.
Two other things. Rajasthan is unbookable in May and June, when it regularly passes 104°F (40°C). And Christmas and New Year rates at these hotels are the highest of the year by a wide margin, so if your dates are flexible, late October or February will buy you a considerably better room.
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