Luxury India Tour with Taj Mahal and Kerala Backwaters

Your international flight lands at Indira Gandhi International Airport, usually late in the evening, and a Heritage India Private Tours representative waits just past customs with a printed name board. Luggage goes straight into the boot of an air-conditioned sedan or SUV, and your chauffeur, who stays with you for the entire northern section, introduces himself on the walk to the car park. Expect a drive of about forty minutes to a luxury hotel in central New Delhi; The Oberoi, which looks over the Delhi Golf Club and the dome of Humayun's Tomb, is our usual choice, subject to availability. A welcome folder with phone numbers, the day-by-day route and a local SIM card is handed over in the car.

Check-in is handled in advance, so you go directly to your room without queuing at the desk. If your flight arrives in daylight, a slow walk through Lodhi Garden is a gentle way to stretch your legs after a long-haul flight; it is free, close to the hotel and full of joggers, picnicking families and fifteenth-century tombs of the Sayyid and Lodi rulers. Otherwise, rest is the best use of the evening. A light dinner of dal, tandoori roti and grilled paneer from room service keeps the stomach settled before the richer meals ahead. Your guide calls in the morning to confirm the start time. Overnight stay in Delhi.

The morning begins at Humayun's Tomb, the red sandstone and marble garden tomb completed in the 1570s that architects call the direct ancestor of the Taj Mahal. Your guide points out the double dome, the charbagh water channels and the smaller tomb of Isa Khan in the same complex. Next door, Sunder Nursery has been restored into a ninety-acre park with Mughal pavilions, a bonsai house and a lake, and it is far quieter than the better-known monuments. Afterwards you drive along Rajpath, now Kartavya Path, between Rashtrapati Bhavan and India Gate, a route designed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker between the two world wars and best appreciated from the comfort of the car.

After lunch, the guide takes you to Qutub Minar, the seventy-three metre fluted tower started in 1199, and the iron pillar standing in the courtyard of the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque. If the day is not a Monday, you can swap Qutub Minar for the Red Fort and its Diwan-i-Khas, as the fort stays shut every Monday. Late afternoon is free for Dastkar at the Nature Bazaar or the shops of Khan Market, good for handloom stoles and blue pottery. For dinner, a table at Bukhara in the ITC Maurya, known for its black dal simmered overnight and its kebabs eaten without cutlery, is easy to reserve on request. Overnight stay in Delhi.

After breakfast you leave Delhi on the six-lane Yamuna Expressway, the quickest road to Agra and one of the smoothest drives in the country. Your chauffeur stops at a clean highway food court roughly halfway, and you reach Agra by lunchtime. Check-in is at The Oberoi Amarvilas, our usual choice subject to availability, where every room faces the Taj Mahal about six hundred metres away across terraced gardens and fountains. Lunch on the terrace of the hotel's Esphahan restaurant or by the pool sets the tone for a relaxed afternoon, with the monument in sight from almost every corner of the property, including the bathtubs in many of the rooms.

Mid-afternoon, a local guide joins you for Agra Fort, the red sandstone citadel that Akbar began in 1565. Inside you will see the white marble Khas Mahal, the Anguri Bagh garden with its geometric beds, and the octagonal Musamman Burj where Shah Jahan was confined by his son Aurangzeb. From there you cross the Yamuna to Mehtab Bagh, the moonlight garden directly opposite the Taj, for sunset. The view of the mausoleum across the water, with fishermen and buffalo along the bank, is the best way to see it before the main visit. Dinner at Esphahan features slow-cooked Awadhi dishes and a live santoor player. Overnight stay in Agra.

The hotel arranges an electric buggy to the East Gate about thirty minutes before sunrise, so you are among the first visitors through security. Your guide walks you past the Darwaza-i-Rauza gateway and explains the Quranic calligraphy that seems to keep the same size as it rises, the pietra dura flowers set with carnelian and lapis, and the cenotaphs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan inside the main chamber. Please remember that the Taj Mahal is closed every Friday, so this day is always arranged around that rule. Back at the hotel, breakfast is served with the same view, and you then visit Itimad-ud-Daulah, the delicate marble tomb often called the Baby Taj, on the far bank.

Leaving Agra before noon, you drive west on the highway toward Jaipur. The main detour is to Abhaneri, about ninety-five kilometres before Jaipur, where the Chand Baori stepwell drops thirteen storeys in some 3,500 narrow steps arranged in perfect zigzags. Built in the ninth century, it was a cool meeting place in the hot months, and the Harshat Mata temple beside it holds fine carved panels. Late in the afternoon you reach Rambagh Palace, the former residence of Maharaja Man Singh II and our usual choice subject to availability. An evening drink in the Polo Bar, decorated with the family's polo trophies, is a pleasant close to a long day. Overnight stay in Jaipur.

An early start takes you to Amber Fort, eleven kilometres north of the city, before the heat and crowds build. You go up to the Jaleb Chowk courtyard by jeep, enter through the painted Ganesh Pol, and see the Diwan-i-Aam with its double row of columns. Your guide saves the best rooms for last: the Sheesh Mahal, where a single candle flame reflects in thousands of convex mirror pieces, and the Sukh Niwas, where water once ran through a marble channel to cool the room. On the way back, the car pauses at Jal Mahal, the palace standing in the middle of Man Sagar Lake, for photographs from the roadside promenade.

In the afternoon you visit the City Palace, still home to the former royal family, whose flag flies from the Chandra Mahal when the head of the family is in residence. Look for the two silver urns in the Diwan-i-Khas, each large enough to hold more than four thousand litres of Ganges water carried to London for the coronation of Edward VII. Across the lane, the Jantar Mantar observatory holds nineteen stone instruments, including the Samrat Yantra sundial, accurate to about two seconds. A short walk past the honeycomb face of Hawa Mahal ends the day. Dinner at Suvarna Mahal, the palace's former banquet hall with its gilt ceilings, is easy to book. Overnight stay in Jaipur.

This day is deliberately lighter. In the morning, your guide drives you back to Amber village, below the fort, to the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing in a restored haveli, which is closed on Mondays. Here a block carver and a printer demonstrate how carved teak blocks, natural dyes and careful registration produce the patterned cotton Jaipur is known for, and you may try printing a napkin yourself. Nearby, the Panna Meena ka Kund stepwell has crisscrossing staircases that make good photographs in morning light, and it rarely sees more than a handful of visitors at that hour, especially on weekdays.

After lunch, return to Rambagh Palace for an unhurried afternoon. The Jiva Spa offers Indian therapies such as a warm oil abhyanga massage, and the forty-seven acres of Mughal-style gardens are good for a quiet walk before high tea on the verandah. Those who prefer shopping can visit Johari Bazaar for silver and gemstones, or the Gem Palace on MI Road, a jeweller to Indian royalty since the nineteenth century. In the evening, the guide can arrange a visit to the Birla Mandir, a white marble temple that glows when floodlit. Pack for the south tonight, as tomorrow's flight leaves around midday. Overnight stay in Jaipur.

After a late breakfast, your chauffeur drives you to Jaipur International Airport, about thirty minutes from the hotel, and says goodbye. There is no regular nonstop service between Jaipur and Kochi, so the ticket we book connects through Mumbai or Bengaluru, with total travel time of around five to six hours depending on the day. Our team checks the connection time carefully so you are not rushed between gates. Expect the landscape below to change from brown Aravalli scrub to the dense green of the Western Ghats and lagoons as you descend into Cochin International Airport, which runs entirely on solar power.

A new chauffeur, based in Kerala, meets you in the arrivals hall and handles the drive of about one and a half hours to Fort Kochi, the old colonial quarter on the island tip. Check-in is at Brunton Boatyard, our usual choice subject to availability, a hotel built on the site of a Victorian shipyard with rooms that face the harbour mouth. Ships, ferries and dolphins pass close enough to watch from your balcony. Dinner at the hotel's History restaurant draws on recipes from the Portuguese, Dutch, Jewish, Arab and British communities who traded here. Try the Syrian Christian duck roast or a pomfret in banana leaf. Overnight stay in Kochi.

Fort Kochi is best seen on foot in the morning. Your local guide starts at the Chinese fishing nets on the beachfront, the large cantilevered frames said to have been introduced by traders from the court of Kublai Khan, and you may help the fishermen lower one into the water. A short walk takes you to St Francis Church, built by the Portuguese in 1503 and the original burial site of Vasco da Gama before his remains were shipped back to Lisbon. Next comes Santa Cruz Basilica, rebuilt in the early twentieth century with painted ceilings and stained glass, and a stroll through Princess Street with its colonial bungalows, art cafes and bookshops.

Afternoon is for rest, a swim in the hotel pool, or a visit to one of the galleries that open during the Kochi-Muziris Biennale season. At about five o'clock you go to the Kerala Kathakali Centre, where the actors apply their elaborate green, red and white makeup in front of the audience, a process that takes more than an hour. The performance itself, usually an episode from the Mahabharata, follows with drums, cymbals and the singing that carries the story while the dancers act it out through eye movements and hand gestures. Back at the hotel, a sunset drink on the harbour lawn ends the day calmly. Overnight stay in Kochi.

After breakfast you leave the coast and climb into the Western Ghats. The road passes through Kothamangalam and then winds uphill through rubber, cardamom and pepper plantations, with stops for the Cheeyappara and Valara waterfalls, which are at their fullest between June and December. Roadside stalls along this stretch sell hot banana fritters known as pazham pori, and your chauffeur knows which ones fry them fresh. The final hour brings the first views of Munnar's tea gardens, clipped into neat rows across steep hillsides at around 1,600 metres, and the temperature drops noticeably, so keep a light jacket handy in the car for the rest of the day.

Your hotel is a tea-estate resort on the outskirts of town; Windermere Estate, set on a working cardamom and coffee plantation, is our usual choice subject to availability. Rooms are cottages with views across the valley, and the evenings are cool enough for a fire. In the late afternoon, a plantation walk with the estate's naturalist introduces you to pepper vines climbing silver oak, coffee bushes and cardamom plants growing in the shade, along with birds such as the Malabar whistling thrush. Dinner is served in the estate's dining room and features Kerala dishes such as appam with vegetable stew and a fish curry soured with kodampuli. Overnight stay in Munnar.

A morning visit to Eravikulam National Park, about fifteen kilometres from town, is the main event. Forest department buses carry visitors from the Rajamala gate up to the tourism zone, where you walk a paved path across grassland and shola forest and often see the Nilgiri tahr, a rare mountain goat found only in the Western Ghats. The park usually closes in February and March for the calving season, and in those months we substitute a visit to Lakkam waterfall and a tea plantation trek. On clear days you can see Anamudi, at 2,695 metres the highest peak in South India, rising beyond the grassland.

After lunch, the Tata Tea Museum at the Nullatanni estate shows how tea leaves are withered, rolled, fermented and dried, using original machinery from the early twentieth century; it is closed on Mondays. Tastings include orthodox and CTC grades, and the shop sells fresh leaf at estate prices. Later you drive out along the Top Station road to Mattupetty Dam and Kundala Lake, where you can take a short pedal boat or shikara ride, and to Echo Point, where the name is quite literal. Return to the estate for a quiet evening; ask the kitchen for a Kerala-style chicken fry with parotta if you want something hearty. Overnight stay in Munnar.

Leaving the hills after breakfast, you descend through Adimali and Kothamangalam and cross the plains of central Kerala via Muvattupuzha and Kottayam. The landscape changes again from tea estates to rubber trees and then to rice paddies, coconut palms and narrow canals. Your chauffeur can stop at a toddy shop near Kottayam for lunch if you are curious; despite the name, these family-run places serve some of the best spicy food in Kerala, such as tapioca with fish curry and karimeen fry. Otherwise, the hotel serves lunch on arrival in the early afternoon, and the rest of the day is yours.

Kumarakom Lake Resort, our usual choice subject to availability, sits on the eastern shore of Vembanad Lake, the longest lake in India. Its heritage villas were built using timber and carved panels from old Kerala manor houses, and a long pool winds through the gardens like a canal. In the late afternoon, take a sunset cruise on the lake in a traditional country boat, watching cormorants and kingfishers settle in for the night as fishermen paddle home in dugout canoes. The resort's Ayurveda centre can arrange a consultation with a physician tonight for treatments over the next two days. Overnight stay in Kumarakom.

The Kumarakom Bird Sanctuary covers fourteen acres along the edge of the lake and is best visited at around six in the morning, when birds are most active. A naturalist from the resort walks you along the trail, pointing out darters, purple herons, little cormorants and, in the winter months from November to February, migrants such as the Siberian stork and various waders. The walk takes about two hours, and you are back in time for a late breakfast of puttu, kadala curry and fresh pineapple. Bring insect repellent and walking shoes, as the trail can be muddy after rain.

Later in the morning, a small canoe takes you through the narrow village canals that are too shallow for larger boats. Here you see daily life up close: women washing clothes on stone steps, children rowing to school, ducks being herded along the banks, and coconut husks soaking in the water to make coir rope. You may stop at a family home to watch the coir spinning. The afternoon is reserved for an Ayurvedic treatment such as Shirodhara, in which warm herbal oil is poured in a slow stream over the forehead, or simply for reading in a hammock by the lake. Overnight stay in Kumarakom.

After breakfast, a short drive takes you to the jetty near Alleppey's Punnamada Lake, where your private houseboat, known as a kettuvallam, waits for you. These boats were once used to carry rice and spices, and their curved hulls are still made of jackfruit wood tied together with coir rope. A premium boat has an air-conditioned bedroom with an attached bathroom, an open sun deck and a crew of three, including a cook. You are welcomed with fresh coconut water and quickly settle in on the deck as the boat moves out past the pavilions of the Nehru Trophy snake boat race track.

The cruise winds south through Kainakary and toward Champakulam, where a short stop on land lets you see the St Mary's Forane Church, one of the oldest churches in Kerala, with murals inside. Lunch on board is cooked fresh: karimeen pollichathu, a pearl spot fish wrapped in banana leaf, red rice, avial and a crunchy cabbage thoran. In the late afternoon, the boat anchors at a quiet spot, as houseboats are required to stop cruising by about half past five. Tea and banana fritters are served on the deck at sunset, and dinner is served by lantern light. Overnight stay in Alleppey on the private houseboat.

Breakfast of appam and egg curry is served on board while the boat makes its way back to the jetty, usually by nine in the morning. Your chauffeur meets you there and drives you to a lakeside resort in Alleppey for check-in. Later in the morning, a local guide takes you through the town's older quarter, where Alleppey's role as a nineteenth-century port is visible in the warehouses and canals dug for cargo. The Revi Karunakaran Memorial Museum, closed on Mondays, has a strong collection of ivory, Swarovski crystal and Tanjore paintings collected by a family that made its fortune in coir.

In the afternoon, visit Alleppey Beach, with its crumbling old pier and the white lighthouse that you can climb for a view over the coconut groves to the sea. Mullakkal Street, near the temple of the same name, is busy with shops selling banana chips, halwa and brass lamps, and makes for a good last chance to shop. Back at the resort, a farewell dinner can be set up on the lawn by the water with a menu of Kerala seafood, prawn moilee, and palada payasam for dessert. Your chauffeur confirms the airport departure time this evening, based on your flight. Overnight stay in Alleppey.

Breakfast is at leisure, and check-out is arranged to match your flight time. If your flight is in the evening, the resort can usually arrange a late check-out, or you can spend a few hours on a short country boat ride along the canals near the resort. When it is time to leave, your chauffeur drives north on the coastal highway through Cherthala and the outskirts of Kochi to Cochin International Airport. Allow about two and a half hours for the drive, more on weekday mornings when traffic builds near Edappally. Your chauffeur keeps an eye on traffic updates and leaves a margin, because the airport recommends arriving three hours before an international departure.

At the airport, your chauffeur helps with your luggage to the terminal entrance, where only passengers are allowed to enter. Cochin has direct flights to the Gulf hubs, Singapore and Colombo, which offer easy international connections to Europe, Australia and North America, as well as domestic flights to Delhi and Mumbai. If you would like to extend your trip with a few days on a beach in Marari or Kovalam, or add a wildlife stay in Thekkady, our team can arrange it with the same chauffeur and car. We hope the two halves of India on this route stay with you for a long time.