Jaipur in Two Nights — Amber, the Palace and the Pink Grid

Met at Jaipur airport or station — the airport is about half an hour from the old city — and into the grid Sawai Jai Singh II laid out from nothing in 1727 and had painted pink in 1876 for a royal visit. The afternoon takes the two things that sit side by side at its centre: the City Palace, part of which the royal family still occupies, with the Chandra Mahal courtyards and the armoury; and the Jantar Mantar, nineteen masonry instruments built in the 1730s to measure time and the positions of the planets, where the great sundial still keeps time to about two seconds. Both close by five, so a flight that lands after two leaves them for day three. The evening is a walk through Bapu and Johari bazaars as the lamps come on. · Jaipur · Private car

Up the Amber road for the fort at its eight o'clock opening — the Kachhwaha capital before Jaipur existed, begun in 1592 and climbing its hillside in courtyards of sandstone and marble, with the Sheesh Mahal's mirror work in the innermost of them. The first hour is the quiet one; by ten the courtyards fill. Jaigarh above it holds the Jaivana, cast in 1720 and among the largest wheeled cannon ever made, and the two are joined by a walled path. Back down past Jal Mahal, standing in the Man Sagar lake, and the royal cenotaphs at Gaitore on the way. The afternoon is the bazaars by trade inside the grid, and the day ends on the Nahargarh ridge for the sunset over the whole of the city — the road up takes twenty minutes, the view takes an hour. · Amber · Jaipur · overnight Jaipur · Private car

Hawa Mahal before nine, from the street and then from inside — the 1799 screen of 953 windows was built so the women of the court could watch the street unseen, and it faces east, so the morning is the only time its pink sandstone is lit rather than in shadow; the café roofs opposite give the whole facade. Then whatever the first afternoon missed, or the block-printing workshops at Sanganer twenty minutes south, or the Albert Hall museum, before the transfer. Jaipur airport is half an hour from the old city, so a flight after about one in the afternoon is comfortable and a morning one means leaving Hawa Mahal for the drive past. · Jaipur · Private car