Golden Trangle Tour

About Trip -

India's Golden Triangle comprises the three most visited cities in the country's north-west - Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, which are all connected to each other by good road and rail links. On the map, these form a roughly equilateral triangle, some 200-250km along each side. This triangle has been dubbed "golden" for the extraordinary wealth of cultural and historical splendour on offer in each of the three cities.

Jaipur, capital of the largely desert state of Rajasthan, is home to some of Asia's best bazaars. You could spend weeks in Delhi, the sprawling, fascinating Indian capital, and not see it all, while Agra, once the heart of the Moghul empire, boasts the unparalleled beauty of the Taj Mahal, which adorns the banks of the Yamuna river. The Golden Triangle is a classic introduction to India: if you've never been to the subcontinent before, start here. Which usually involves a flight into Delhi.

Delhi, being such a large (population around 14 million) and diverse city, absorbs its tourists with ease. Agra and Jaipur both have sizeable numbers of Western tourists roaming around. Jaipur, as capital of Rajasthan, has a role as a commercial and administrative centre that has nothing to do with tourism, and a population of 2.5m. The city's alluringly frenetic old quarter is known as the Pink City after its red-washed buildings, packed with stalls selling everything from silk to milk. Of Jaipur's numerous monuments, the Hawa Mahal - an ornate five-storey façade, designed to allow the women of the royal household to observe the street in anonymity - has become an icon of Rajasthani architecture.

Completing the triangle, Agra - for all its monumental splendour - can be a trial, with the perpetual smog and the hard-sell hawking. It can at times feel like a swollen village: its parks and public spaces have an oddly suburban ambience. Yet it boasts a stupendous Moghul fort in the city centre and the ethereally beautiful Taj Mahal.

The marble mausoleum is by far the most popular tourist site in India - and despite the hype and the cliché it is an astounding and mesmerising building. In addition, Agra offers other jewelled tombs and architectural marvels as well as a medieval-like maze of ancient bazaars, a mass of hooting, tooting traffic and some of the most rapacious shopkeepers in the country. Motorised traffic is banned from the complex surrounding the Taj Mahal.