moving nightly | 10 nights | from $2,590 per person
Rajasthan Vacation Package: Five Towns, Ten Nights, Eight Rooms
This Rajasthan vacation package puts you in eight rooms in ten nights and gives you a car and a driver to move you between them. It is the quickest honest way to see five towns, and it will tire you out.
What moving nightly means on this trip
- Beds across the trip
- Eight rooms over ten nights. Two nights in Jaipur at the start and two in Udaipur in the middle, then single nights in Bundi, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, a desert camp, and Jodhpur and Jaipur again on the way back, in different rooms both times.
- How the bag moves
- The driver loads and unloads it at every stop, so it goes into the car before you have finished breakfast and reaches the next room before dark. You carry it yourself only up the stairs in Bundi and across 40 yards of sand at the camp.
- The longest single move
- Jaisalmer and the camp back to Jodhpur: 155 miles of single carriageway, 5 hours 45 minutes door to door with one tea stop. The Udaipur to Jodhpur run is about 20 minutes shorter.
- Time actually spent moving
- Around 34 hours in the car over ten days, close to a fifth of your waking hours. Six days involve more than three hours of driving, and two of those go past five.
- What stays in the room
- Almost nothing stays put, because the room changes again tomorrow. Water, a hat, a scarf against the dust and your camera live in the car all day, and the only thing that reliably stays behind is the pair of shoes you are not wearing.
- What the rhythm buys, and what it costs
- You get five towns and the 600 miles of country between them in ten nights, which is the shape of Rajasthan rather than a postcard of it. You pay for that by never having a second morning anywhere, and by closing your suitcase eight times.
- Who this rhythm does not suit
- Anyone who wants to wake up twice in the same room, anyone traveling with a child under six, and anyone whose back objects to six hours on rough two lane road. If you are coming a long way to rest, this rhythm will not let you.
The last row loses this desk bookings and it stays on the page anyway. A rhythm that does not suit you is far cheaper to discover here than on the fourth morning.
What the figure covers
- Eight rooms over ten nights, mid-tier and air conditioned, plus one canvas tent with a real mattress 25 miles out of Jaisalmer.
- A car and a driver for all ten days, yours alone, from the arrivals door to the departures door. He waits while you walk, and you never share him with another party.
- Breakfast on all ten mornings, taken wherever you slept, camp included.
- Two walks of about three hours each with a guide who lives in the town he is walking you through, one in Bundi and one in Jodhpur.
- Entry to the six forts, palaces and step wells this route goes inside rather than past.
- Dinner and breakfast at the desert camp, and a camel handler for the hour before sunset if you want one.
- A printed sheet carrying every address in Hindi for the driver, plus each room reconfirmed in writing before you leave home.
What sits outside the figure
- Getting to India. Round trip from Colorado Springs to Delhi runs roughly $1,040 to $1,570 per person by season. It is priced on its own line and is never folded into the $2,590.
- Lunches and dinners other than the two at camp. Allow $12 to $25 a day per person.
- Tips for the driver and the two guides. Around $9 a day between two of you is normal, and the figure stays your decision.
- Drinks, laundry and anything you buy. Most rooms return laundry the same evening.
- Any internal flight. Nobody flies this route, but if the 155 mile drive out of Udaipur defeats you it converts to a ticket plus one extra night.
What it costs
from $2,590 per person
- What it covers
- 10 nights, one car and a driver, five towns, a different room most nights.
- What it assumes
- Two people to a room, unless the seven rows above say otherwise for your case.
- What pushes it up
- Which month you pick, which grade of room, how late you leave it, and how far the beds sit from each other.
- When it hardens
- The day it is written down with an operator named on it. Before that it marks the bottom of a range and claims nothing else.
Settlement happens between you and the operator, on their system. Nothing is collected on these pages and no card reaches this desk.
The months this route works and the months it does not
Late October to mid-March is the whole season. Days sit between 70 and 82 F, the forts are walkable at noon, and the desert night drops near 40 F in January, which catches out anyone who packed for India and not for a winter plateau.
March is the hinge. By its last week Jodhpur passes 100 F in the afternoon and the walking gets cut short. April, May and June run 110 to 118 F on the road: the car is the only cool place in the day, the forts empty out by mid-morning, and we do not send this itinerary in those three months at all. July to September is cooler, but the drives stretch, and the Udaipur leg has taken seven hours in a wet week.
Two stretches inside the good season we would push you off. The week of Diwali, because rooms in Jaipur and Udaipur roughly double and the roads between towns stop moving. And the last ten days of December, when rates hit their annual peak and every fort courtyard is full by ten in the morning. Shift either one two weeks in either direction and you pay less for a quieter version of the same Rajasthan vacation package.
What still has to be decided
Four things get settled at confirmation and not before. Room grade at each of the eight stops, since the mid-tier and the one above it differ by about $40 a night. Whether Jaipur or Udaipur keeps its second night, because one of them gives it up if you want longer in the west. Whether the desert camp stays in the plan or is swapped for a second night in Jaisalmer town. And the date itself, which we hold for five days while the rooms come back confirmed.