The Golden Triangle: India in a week

India is not a country you cover in a week, and the Golden Triangle exists because someone sensible accepted that early. Rather than attempt a survey, it takes three cities in the north — Delhi, Agra and Jaipur — that sit close enough together to form a loop, and lets them stand for themselves rather than for the whole subcontinent.

It is the most travelled tourist route in India. That's a reasonable thing to be slightly suspicious of, and also a reasonable reason to start here.

Why these three

The cities aren't just geographically convenient. They represent distinct architectural and political traditions, and seeing them in sequence makes each one legible in a way it wouldn't be alone.

Delhi is layered — successive cities built on and beside each other over many centuries, so its monuments span an enormous range of periods and styles within a single metropolis. Agra is Mughal, and it is where that empire's architecture reaches its most refined. Jaipur is Rajput — a princely capital, planned as a whole, and stylistically its own thing.

Three cities, three answers to the question of what a capital should look like.

Delhi — two days

Delhi rewards the visitor who accepts that it is several cities at once. Old Delhi and New Delhi are not neighbourhoods of one urban plan; they're different projects from different eras with different logics, and the contrast between them is the point.

Two days is enough to take one substantial monument complex per half-day without the schedule becoming a forced march. It's worth resisting the urge to fill the gaps — Delhi's distances are real and traffic is a genuine variable.

Agra — one day, timed carefully

Agra is on the route for one reason, and it is a very good reason.

The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum, completed in the mid-seventeenth century by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. Everyone has seen it. Almost nobody is prepared for the surface: photographs render it as a smooth white silhouette, and up close it is nothing of the sort. The marble is inlaid with semi-precious stones — a technique called pietra dura — in flowing floral patterns, and there is carved relief work and calligraphy across the facades. The detail is at hand height. You can stand close enough to see individual pieces of inlaid stone.

The other thing photographs cannot convey is that it changes colour. White marble takes the colour of the light falling on it, so the building reads warm and pink early, blinding white at midday, and softer again late.

Agra also has a substantial fort, which most day-trippers skip and which is worth the time if you have it. It gives context that the Taj alone doesn't: the same dynasty, the same red sandstone-and-marble vocabulary, but built for power rather than for grief.

Jaipur — two days

Jaipur was founded in the early eighteenth century and — unusually for a city of its age — planned from the outset on a grid, with a wall and gates and a systematic layout. Much of the old city is painted a uniform pink, applied in the nineteenth century and maintained since, which is where the nickname comes from.

The architecture is Rajput, with Mughal influence, and the palace complexes are built around courtyards and screens rather than grand axial vistas. The most photographed facade in the city is essentially a tall, elaborate honeycomb of small windows, built so that women of the court could watch the street without being seen from it.

Two days gives you the city palace and old city on one, and the hill fort above town on the other.

Getting between them

The three cities are connected by both rail and road, and the legs are measured in hours. This is what makes a three-city loop realistic in a week — you are not losing a day to each transfer.

Whichever you choose, build the transfer into the day rather than pretending it's free. A morning leg followed by an afternoon of sightseeing works; an afternoon leg followed by an evening of sightseeing generally doesn't.

Seven days, five days of leave

The whole loop fits inside a week. Bracket it with two weekends and you're spending five working days to get three cities and one of the most recognisable buildings on earth.

That's the case for the Golden Triangle over a more ambitious Indian itinerary on a first visit: not that it shows you India, but that it fits in the amount of time most people actually have, without feeling rushed. India's public holidays are worth checking against your dates — several are major national observances, which affects how busy the route is.