The golden triangle is a popular route for many tourists as it consists of 3 major destinations which are all in a +/- 4 hour distance of each other. Jaipur is the capital of the state of Rajasthan, Agra is probably the most visited city in India as it harbours India’s most iconic building and New Delhi… well it is the capital, biggest city of India and it has the main international airport in the north, meaning many tourists will start their journey from here. Most people do the golden triangle in a comfortable 8 – 10 days.
I did the whole thing in a whooping 4 days. Rushed? For sure. Did I feel like I missed something? Not really. The reason why I had to rush it like this, was that I spend more time in Udaipur than anticipated (because of Holi) and that I absolutely needed to be in Agra on thursday since the Taj Mahal is not open for public on fridays!
How to get from Udaipur to Jaipur
I took a train at 5 in the morning in Udaipur which arrived at noon in Jaipur. This time I had no sleeper class, but the far more simple CC class, which stands for chair car. These are still okay, you have a comfortable seat and this class still has an AC. The only thing which made things a little akward is that my seat was one of 4 with a table in the middle, facing each other. Usually Indians are quite chatty towards foreigners and strike up conversations with me but not this time. The 7 hours still passed quickly between snoozing, reading ang listening to music. Time becomes somewhat relative once you have had a few trips with public transport in India.
Jaipur
Jaipur, also dubbed “the pink city” is the capital of Rajhasthan and far bigger than the other cities I visited of this state in the last few days. Arriving at 12 and knowing that I had to travel on the next day, gave me basically half a day to explore this city. That was certainly short, I would have prefered to spend two nights here, but it just was not possible this time. Nethertheless I managed to see the main sights:
– the Amber Fort, which once again is not inhabited but needs to be visited by paying entrance, just like most other historical sites. A very impressive fort, which lies a few km outside of Jaipur. What I liked especially about this one is that it consists of many little corridords, rooms and staircases and there is no given order in which it has to be visited. You can enter and easily get lost in the small passages. Very fun to explore!
– Jal Mahal, a temple on an island which seems to be floating on a lake. It lies on the way to the Amber fort and you can just ask your Tuk-Tuk driver to have a quick stop to admire it and take a few pictures.
– Hawa Mahal “the wind palace” which has an opulent front side. It is inside the pink city and you will probably come across it when you explore the city on foot. The palace itself is small and not worth visiting, what is special about it is really just its front.
– Albert music hall, which is beautifully lit in the evening.
Click on one of the pictures below to see the Jaipur Gallery:
How to get to Agra from Jaipur
(including Chand Baori Stepwell stopover!)
I could have taken a quick direct bus or train from Jaipur to Agra (about 4 hours) but I really wanted to see the Chand Baori stepwell – one of Indias biggest stepwells – which lies on the way. The fast buses do not make a stop here.
So I had two options:
– hiring a private driver to bring me to Agra with a stop at said stepwell. This would have costed about 5000 INR.
– using public transport. This is what I did. In the end I paid only 400 INR, but it costed me almost the whole day. That’s ok since using the real public transport (not the convenient fast buses) in India is a very special experience in itself.
First I took a publiic bus from Jaipur to Sikandra. This took about 2 hours. Here I hired a Tuk-tuk to bring me to the stepwell (another 10 km) an back, for 200 INR. This trip took maybe another hour, with maybe spending 15 minutes at the stepwell itself. Then, back at Sikandra, I took another public bus to Agra. Sikandra is just a pass-through city, there is no major bus station. Whenever a bus arrives you have to wave at it to make it slow down and then ask the conductor “Agra? Agra?”. It took me about 5 buses until a conductor finally said “Agra, Yes”, the bus slowed down, let me jump in, and kept on driving. This all happens really quick as the bus does not really stop, I kinda had to jump in (funny act with my big backpack). Then I was again sitting in non-AC public transport and it became another great experience as I sat next to two young indian fellows who told me they were traveling from Jaipur to Agra where they would take a 17 hour train to go to the south and we quickly sank into a conversation about the many places to visit in Inda which lasted the remaining 3 hours of this bus ride.
Agra
After I spend a full day on the buses to see the Chand Baori stepwell (worth it!) I arrived in Agra in the evening. As mentioned earlier, I assume that Agra is the most visited city in India since it is here where you’ll find India’s icon, the Taj Mahal. I set my alarm to get up early that morning, the best time to visit the Taj Mahal is at 6 am, when it opens. You’ll avoid the big tourist buses wich start coming in after breakfast and you can see the sunrise! Estimate about two hours to spend here, this should give you enough time to take a picture from each possible angle.
After the Taj Mahal I went back to my homestay for breakfast and then went on to see Agra’s red fort, another impressive fort (it is very intersting how each fort that I visited so far had something unique about it!), the “baby Taj”, which is another smaller mausoleum and the beautiful gardens on the riverbank behind the Taj Mahal, giving you once more a beautiful sight from yet another point of view.
And those are the highlights of Agra, I felt like the one day I dedicated to it was fully enough to visit everything.
Click on one of the pictures below to see the Agra Gallery:
![India solo travel backpacking Agra Taj Mahal](https://letzexplore.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PXL_20240328_052405664.MP_-scaled.jpg "Itmad-Ud-Daula "the Baby Taj"")
a different experience of New Delhi
Delhi has its reputation and it is not a good one. I think every single person that I talked to, Indians as well as foreigners which had already visited Delhi, told me that it is a horrible place. Loud, more overcrowded than any other place in India, dirty, polluted and even outright unsafe.
So I took a different approach. If you look at the map you’ll notice that the city is indeed subdivided into Old Delhi and New Delhi, Old Delhi being the part were most tourists go, where the cheap backpacker hotels are, but also where the bad reputation seemingly comes from. I chose an area way more in the south (the name of that zone being “Defence Colony”, which is a secured neighbourhood with security guards and gates that close at night. It was such a quiet environement, I did not even hear cars honking, that I wondered if I was still in India. So, such places exist in Delhi! In the morning I visited the very beautiful “Lodhi Garden”, a park where the flowers and the birds seem to compete with each other in who’s more colorfull. After I went on to see the governmental buildings which are connected to the gate of India by a large straight road with lots of trees and greeneries inbetween. The national museum of India was a welcome stop to escape the afternoon heat and lastly I saw the tomb of Humayun. I then went on to see the beautiful Lotus temple but, unknowing to me, it closed at 5 pm, half an hour before I made it there. So I was only able to get a glance (and a picture) from distance and through the fence.
In short, I got a very different and positive view of New Delhi. One might say no that I did not get the real experience, but what is it worth if everyone tells the “real” experience was horrible? I have seen enough overcrowded cities in the last 4 weeks, it was nice to see a different side of India.
Click on one of the pictures below to see the New Delhi Gallery:
Taj Mahal – Sunrise – WONNERSCHÉIN!! 😀
Wann een bessi Bauch-Beine-Po wëll trainéieren kann een jo den Chand Baori Stepwell rop a rof lafen 😛 Mengen do ass een duerno gudd schlapp 😛
Wonnerschéin och ze gesinn wéi hier Palaster / Buergen opgebaut sinn, wierklech bëandrockend! 😀