Palace on Wheels India Tour (08-Days)

The tour starts in the evening with the ceremonial welcome aboard the Palace on Wheels Travel at Delhi Cantonment. Delhi too is an ancient capital, once the fabled city of the heroes of the Mahabharata, and ruled by the Rajputs before they were displaced by the Tughlaqs, the khiljis, and the Mughals. After a hectic day of sightseeing, the train will come as a respite. Feel free to explore your new home, and acquaint yourself with its various facilities. Relax with a drink at the bar. Dinner will be served on board the two restaurants. The train departs from Delhi at 18:30 hrs.

Arrive 02:00 hrs in Jaipur to be greeted by caparisoned elephants. Lunch will be served at Rambagh Palace, and dinner is a celebration under the canopy of the star-lit skies at Jai Mahal Palace. Your sightseeing during the day includes Amber Fort, Hawa Mahal, the Jantar Mantar observatory, and the City Palace complex. The train departs from the Pink City at 19:30 hrs.
Jaipur became the capital of the Kachchwaha kings when they shifted here from their hilltop of Amber. It was built according to the principles laid down in the ancient architectural treatises, but with all the opulence deserving of a royal city. At its center rose the seven-tiered palace of the royal family, and around it came up gardens and temples, its astronomical observatory and the myriads of mansions and shops that went into the making of the new capital. Since Amber is only eleven kilometers from Jaipur, visitors can travel up to the great fort on elephant-fort, to experience the pomp and grandeur of one of the India's finest royal capitals.
The Palace on Wheels Tour  Jaipur also offers a great shopping experience since the city is country's capital as far as handicrafts goes - and they include a very extensive range- as well as a major international center for the cutting and polishing of gems and stones. It also has a number of palace hotels, and both Rambagh and Jai Mahal, which are the venues for guests for their lunch and dinner, are intimately linked with the history of this former princely state. Rambagh, in fact, was the last palace in which the former Maharaja and his glamorous Maharani, and now Rajmata and Queen mother of Jaipur, the popular Gayatri Devi, resided. The palace not only has most of the original furnishings and artifacts, but its famous Polo Bar also has pictures of the last maharaja with English aristocracy and other important guests.

Arrive at 08:15 hrs at Jaisalmer. Spend the day in this isolated, but architecturally one of the greatest royal bastions of the world. After a safari dinner served under the stars, at a campsite, come back to the train to resume your journey. Departure is at 23:00 hrs.
Jaisalmer was the stronghold of the Bhatti Rajputs, and a hardier race never lived. Their early settlement was marked by brigandage, as they looted caravans at will, stealing horses, and inviting the wrath of the West Asian invaders. Over time they began to settle, and the 12th century fort with its ninety-nine bristling bastions was established on top of Trikuta hill, exactly as prophesied for these descendants of Krishna.
Isolated Jaisalmer may have been, a lost city in the sands of the Thar, more mythic than real, for those of who heard of it, but the caravans that passed through its territories enriched the coffers of the treasury. It also kept Jaisalmer in touch with the world, for such caravans carried not merely goods but also artisans and master-craftsmen. The Maharawals of Jaisalmer thought of making use of their services to build the magnificent, sandstone architecture for which it has become known around the world.

Time for you to visit yet another desert kingdom, Jodhpur, where you arrive at 07:00 hrs. You can spend the morning at Mehrangarh Fort that towers over the city like an eagle's eye, and then come downhill to lunch at Umaid Bhawan Palace, the largest art-deco residence in the world, and now home to the head of the royal family, museum and luxury hotel. Departure, after unwinding in the palace, is at 15:30 hrs.
The history of Jodhpur is five-hundred-year-old, the bastion of the valiant Rathore Rajputs, bristles with conflicts and sieges, with battles and savage skirmishes, so it is difficult to believe that they found the time to not only build the impossibly invincible-looking Mehrangarh Fort, but also its lavish, and delicately embellished palaces. Within the fort, the accoutrements of the royal past are well presented - swords and daggers and spears and matchlock guns; a battle tent seized from Emperor Jehangir; howdahs and chariots and carriages; cribs and beds; the royal, octagonal throne; musical instruments, large drums, even a collection of turbans.
Emplyee of Palace on WheelsFrom the ramparts of the fort, where the cannons are still mounted, the sweeping view also takes in a huge palace located on top of another, though lower, hill. This is Umaid Bhawan, the palace the maharajas set out to build as a famine relief project, but also ambitiously as the world's largest private residence. It was intended to, and did, rival the presidential palace coming up at Delhi. Built by a British architect, while the planning has incorporated the elements of the Rajput lifestyle (large courtyards, for example, or a zenana wing), there is a formal, western sense of symmetry and restrained sense of ornamentation. Only in the royal suites does exuberance take over, since a Polish artist, then traveling in India, was given the permission to create huge paintings to suit the art-deco theme of the architecture and furniture in the palace. A museum here, unlike that of the fort, has memorabilia that consists of clocks and silver and tableware, a nostalgic look at a more recent past.
The grounds of the palace are huge, and toward the back, there is a bougainvillea garden, perhaps the only one of its kind in the world, and at the end, a baradari, a pillared pavilion where the maharajas held mehfils, entertainment courts. Within the palace, the courtrooms are more formal, while the ballrooms resounded, till recently, with the sounds of revelry, now captured in the whispered conversations of tourists.

Steam into Sawai Madhopur to spend the day in the wilds of Ranthambor National Park, which is home to the royal Bengal tiger, the stateliest of the big cats. As it moves through the underbrush, its tawny gold hide striped with bands of black, the jungle stands to attention.
Ranthambor is also very picturesque. A number of lakes form the shallow lands where tiger sightings are quite common, and where herds of deer can be seen foraging while crocodiles bask in the sun. The hills ring the park, and in the distance the ramparts of Ranthambor fort create a dramatic silhouette. Once, this was the scene for fierce battles, and for fiery jauhars, but all that is of the past now, though former hunting lodges such as Jogi Mahal, close to the lakes, is still in a great state of preservation.
Ranthambor is particularly well known for its tiger sightings because the undisturbed environs and the spreading, shallow lakes provide them the surroundings best suited to their needs, and therefore sightings by day time are quite common. Various conversationalists and wildlife photographers have worked at length here to document the life cycle of the tigresses of Ranthambor, even giving them names, so that they are now a part of the regional lore.
Since the best time to visit the park is in the early morning, the train arrives at 04:00 hrs, and leaves for its next destination at 10:30 hrs. Lunch and dinner are served on board the train, since the journey is a long one. This afternoon, it's time to relax from your earlier hectic schedule, and spend it on reading, making friends, and watch the changing topography of this semi-arid desert as it changes from the lush forests of the Aravallis to the flat plains, and eventually barren, sandy desert.
Sunday, Chittaurgarh and Udaipur, the capitals of the Sisodia Maharanas, enjoy pre-eminence among the Rajput clans of Rajasthan. Arrival at Chittaurgarh at 16:00 hrs. Chittaurgarh is India's most valorous fort, its history an unending saga of passion, chivalry and romance. Within its sprawling ramparts were beautiful palaces, but few of them remain, the fort having been sacked by invaders through acts of treachery. It was finally abandoned following the long Mughal siege and the battle of Haldighati. The Sisodias escaped to the hills and lived the life of nomads while they schemed to avenge their honor.

In time, the Sisodias also laid the foundation for a new kingdom - Udaipur - situated by Lake Pichola, where the impressive City Palace was lavished with aesthetic embellishments, and the art of miniature paintings was encouraged in its ateliers. Subsequently, too, the princes built the island palaces, summer retreats that cover the masses of land so that the building looks afloat in water.
Besides the Lake Palace, there are other such retreats that have been converted into hotels, one of them Shiv Niwas, being run by the current head of the family. A graceful, valorous race, the Sisodias and their city bring alive the excitement of a medieval kingdom as it once was, and with a little imagination, can still almost be?.

It must be Bharatpur. Arrive at 06:30 hrs at a royal kingdom where the Jats, rather than the Rajputs, ruled. Bharatpur's Jat history is not too old, with Suraj Mal establishing a firm stronghold in the region contested by both the Rajputs and the Mughals. Suraj Mal's exploits are legendary, and the fort, Lohagarh, or iron fort, has a history that recounts it with pride. The only fort in the state to have bastions of mud, these proved meritorious because they simply swallowed up the canon shells, not allowing them to impact.
However, it is not for its fort, or palace, or even the close-by fortified resort of Deeg that the passengers of the Palace on Wheels are here for: their attention is drawn to the bird sanctuary, one of the finest in the world. The Keoladeo Ghana National Park was developed by a royal edict when dykes were created so that water could be channelised for the hunting preserve the maharaja of Bharatpur wished to create. In the early decade of this century, Bharatpur became famous among visiting British royalty and aristocracy for the amount of game the visitors bagged. These days, thankfully, only shooting by cameras is permitted in this sanctuary with over three hundred species of birds, many of them migrant species that come from parts as distant as Siberia and China.
After visiting the sanctuary in the morning, visitors travel by coach to Fatehpur Sikri, the red sandstone city built by Emperor Akbar on a lavish scale, but which he had to abandon soon after because of a shortage of water. From here to Agra, first for lunch at Welcomgroup Mughal Sheraton, and then for a visit to the world's most well-known monument, and well-worth its fame: the Taj Mahal. Built in the memory of his beloved empress by Emperor Shah Jahan, this marble mausoleum is the greatest gesture of love known to mankind, and is breathtakingly, bewitchingly beautiful.
Land for the building of the Taj Mahal came from Agra came from the maharaja of Jaipur, and the marble used in its construction was from the mines of Makrana, also in Rajasthan. The precious stones used in its inlay, and the craftsmen employed for the twenty-two years its construction took, came not only from India, but from all over the world.
The Taj Mahal is the perfect finale to your royal sojourn.

You're back in Delhi as early as 06:00 hrs where, after breakfast on board the train, you descend to the humdrum existence of modern life, with only royal memories to retain for the rest of your lifetime.