Agra

Agra is a four-hour drive from Jaipur and most travellers give it a single day. That is enough, if you start at sunrise.

The Taj Mahal opens thirty minutes before sunrise and closes thirty minutes before sunset, and it is shut every Friday. The first hour is the one worth having: low light on the marble, the river mist still sitting behind it, and a fraction of the crowd that arrives by ten.