Grand Rajasthan — Jaipur, the Thar and the Lake City

Into the city Sawai Jai Singh II laid out on a grid in 1727 and had painted pink in 1876 for a royal visit. The City Palace, still partly a residence, and the Jantar Mantar beside it take the afternoon — the observatory's nineteen masonry instruments were built in the 1730s and the great sundial still keeps time to a couple of seconds. Hawa Mahal's pierced screen of 953 windows is a short walk away and is best in the morning light, so it is left for tomorrow if the day runs out.

Amber before the heat — the Kachhwaha capital from 1592, rising up its hillside in courtyards of sandstone and marble, with the Sheesh Mahal's mirrored ceiling at the top and Jaigarh's enormous 1720 cannon above. The afternoon is the old city on its original grid: the bazaars by trade, Jal Mahal standing in the Man Sagar water, and the royal cenotaphs at Gaitore, which are among the most beautiful and least visited things in Jaipur.

Five and a half to six hours north-west, with the cultivation thinning steadily until the desert takes over. Bikaner was founded in 1488 on a caravan route between Central Asia and Gujarat, and the first call is on the edge of town: the National Research Centre on Camel at Jorbeer, a working government breeding and study station with several hundred animals, open to visitors from midday in winter and from two in summer, until six — which is exactly when this road arrives. Into town afterwards, with the evening free; the old walled city's havelis are worth a walk if there is light.

Junagarh in the morning, whose Anup Mahal in gold leaf and lacquered Badal Mahal are better preserved than almost anything comparable in the state, and which — unusually — sits on the plain rather than a hill and was never taken in four hundred years. Two hours is right for it. West after that across open desert, around 330 km and six hours, past Pokhran and the pilgrimage shrine at Ramdevra, into Jaisalmer in the evening.

Jaisalmer Fort dates from 1156 and around two thousand people still live inside its walls, which makes it one of a handful of genuinely inhabited forts anywhere — houses and Jain temples along lanes that are somebody's street rather than an exhibit. The yellow sandstone turns gold in low sun and gives the city its name. Patwon ki Haveli and Salim Singh ki Haveli below are the great merchant houses, and Gadisar lake at the end of the afternoon is where the town goes.

The morning stays in Jaisalmer for whatever the first day missed — the fort lanes are better early — and the afternoon goes west to the dunes beyond Sam. Camel or jeep out onto the sand for the sunset, dinner and Rajasthani folk music at the camp, and a sky that is the real reason to be out here. The camps in this stretch are numerous and near each other rather than isolated, which is worth knowing before arriving expecting silence.

East out of the Thar, five hours, the scrub gradually returning to cultivation. Mehrangarh in the afternoon — begun in 1459, standing 120 m above the old city on a sheer rock, never taken by siege, with the marks of the 1808 cannonade still in the gate and a first-rate museum of palanquins, howdahs and Marwar miniature painting inside. Jaswant Thada, the marble cenotaph of 1899 just below, is the better place to watch the light go.

South through the Aravallis, breaking at Ranakpur, where a Jain temple begun in the fifteenth century stands in pale marble on 1,444 columns, no two carved alike — non-Jain visitors are admitted during set middle-of-the-day hours, which is exactly when a transfer passes. Into Udaipur in the late afternoon, and down to the ghats for the change of scale: after six days of desert and fort, a city built around a lake takes some adjusting to.

The City Palace in the morning, the largest palace complex in Rajasthan, grown by successive Mewar rulers from 1559 into a facade nearly a quarter of a kilometre long above Pichola, with the Jagdish temple of 1651 at its gate. If the flight is late enough, Saheliyon ki Bari's fountains or a boat on the lake fill the rest of the morning. Udaipur airport is about half an hour east of the city.