Golden Triangle Tour March 2026

India | Mar 10 - Mar 26, 2026

We went straight to KimKim to arrange this trip, having had a great experience with them before.

Rajat was our contact in India, which was fantastic because he is so knowledgeable about the India travel scene and was keen to make the tour work well for us. Through excellent online messaging via KimKim we let Rajat know what sort of things we wanted to do / see, and he made all the arrangements including booking train tickets, hotels, flights and most importantly our guides and drivers. I cannot speak highly enough of the guides and drivers we had and I have to especially name Hemant (guide) and Nerinder (driver) who were particularly brilliant. Hemant met us in Delhi to accompany us on our train journey to Agra and spent the next 10 days or so with us, leaving us at Udaipur for our flight to Mumbai / Goa. Hemant was incredibly knowledgeable and shared not only cultural and historic stories which bought India to life for us, but whenever he spotted something of interest - for example a pilgrimage, or a street of drum shops - he explained what it was all about. Hemant did not shy away from explaining the good and not so good, and remained neutral throughout. There wasn't a single question he didn't know the answer to! Other tourists we met had not had that level of interest or detail shared with them, so it was quite fun to tell them what we had learned from Hemant. We continue to tell stories to our friends now! Our driver Nerinder was with us almost the whole trip, meeting us at Delhi airport with Rajat at 3am! Nerinder never ever failed to be there for us - we never had to wait for him - and he made us feel so safe the whole time, despite some of the crazy driving in the cities or cows randomly crossing the motorway! His car was always immaculate and he kept stocks of sweets and plenty of bottled water for us. He was an absolute gentleman and a bit of a hero for all the driving and distance he did with no map or sat nav!

Every part of the trip was seemlessly arranged by Rajat. All the hotels were fabulous and just seemed to get more and more fabulous as we went! Important to add that even while we were in India we decided to change some plans. In particular (with the help of Hemant) we decided not to take a train from Jaipur to Udaipur due to timetable changes making arrival / hotel check-in very late in the evening which we wanted to avoid, and this was fed back to Rajat so he could keep on top of where we were etc.

People have their own preconceived ideas about India, but we went with an open mind and were certainly not disappointed. Thanks to Rajat, our guides and drivers, we experienced what felt like an awful lot of India - culture, history, religion, life - the good bits and the not so good bits - scenery, wildlife, poeple and I almost forgot to mention the food!

Our guides knew exactly the best places to stop for food en route and thanks to them we experienced some of the best food we've ever tasted! They also helped us to buy marble inlay creations from a traditional craft shop in Agra, rugs from a traditional carpet-making factory in Jaipur (which were delivered to us at home just 10 days later!) and ceramics from a famous potter in Jaipur! We had to restrain ourselves from buying a lot more handmade crafts etc which wasn't always easy with the hard-sell in some places, but our decisions were respected and we felt we contributed our bit as tourists.

Our notable highlights of the trip (sometimes not for obvious reasons):

walking tour of Old Delhi
first sight of the Taj Mahal from Agra Fort 1.5km away
observing and travelling alongside pilgrims for 50kms or so from Agra to Fatehpur Sikri
jeeping in and around Ranthambore tiger reserve (even though we didn't see a tiger, but we saw a rare sloth bear)
Nahargarh hotel Ranthambore
food on the road, particularly at Molecule on the outskirts of Jaipur - careful with those Indian chillies!
The Jantar Mantar (observatory) Jaipur
dancing and puppet show in Udaipur
the kindness of people

In short, we cannot recommend a touring trip to India highly enough and would definitely like to explore Mumbai and Kerala some time in the future - Rajat, we'll definitely be coming back to you for help with that! Thank you for everything you did to make our trip so enjoyable and memorable. Best wishes to you and all our guides and drivers.