Essential India - Delhi, Varanasi, Jodhpur, Jaipur & Agra

The rich and fertile riverine plains of northern India have long formed a corridor allowing migrations and invasions to spread across the Subcontinent. The result is a region of fascinating cultural diversity.

Like the Ganges and the Yamuna, the sacred rivers of Hindu lore, this tour runs through the modern state of Uttar Pradesh and neighbouring Rajasthan. Yet its scope is not limited by these geo-political boundaries. Participants are treated to a comprehensive overview of the Subcontinent’s history – from the emergence of Hinduism and Buddhism to the decline of the Mughal Empire, the last Islamic power before the British Raj of the nineteenth century.

Varanasi, perched on the banks of the Ganges, is India’s most sacred place and claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Founded by Lord Shiva, the city is mentioned in scriptures dating from the early Vedic period, in the second millennium bc. It was known as Kashi, the Luminous, during the life of the Buddha, who visited on several occasions on his way to Sarnath nearby where he preached his first sermon. Pilgrims still flock here to wash away their sins in the holy Ganges. The modern Varanasi is also a place of learning and culture – with the first Hindu university in India. 

In Rajasthan, the legacy of the Rajputs endures in their spectacular forts and palaces. Initially resisting Muslim expansion in North India, these Hindu maharajas later became co-architects of the Mughal Empire. Their fine cities have been magnets for tourists and travellers since the days of Pierre Loti and Rudyard Kipling. Some have ancient origins, but in the more settled times of the heyday of the Mughals and of the period of British rule they built increasingly elaborate and delicately ornamented palace apartments within the embattled forts of their forebears. 

These buildings of the Mughals in the 16th and 17th centuries are often regarded as the apex of India’s artistic achievements, a prestige due no doubt in no small part to its best-known representative, the Taj Mahal, a creation which hovers somewhere between architecture, jewellery and myth. White marble is typical of the late period, while earlier buildings are of red sandstone – the deserted capital of Akbar at Fatehpur Sikri, and the Red Fort of Agra.

Few cities in the world rival Delhi in imperial succession. With most new ruling powers establishing their own capital alongside those of its predecessors, Delhi’s architectural legacy is a palimpsest of power – from a monumental 13th-century minaret to the majestic expansiveness of Lutyens’ New Delhi. Empire succeeds empire; just eighteen years after the Viceroy took up residence in Government House it was handed over to a newly independent India.