Rajasthan Desert Circuit — Jaipur, Bikaner, Jaisalmer & Jodhpur

Into Jaipur, laid out on a grid in 1727 and washed pink in 1876. The City Palace and the Jantar Mantar fill the afternoon — the latter is nineteen masonry instruments built in the 1730s, and standing inside the great sundial while it keeps time to a couple of seconds is a strange experience. Hawa Mahal, whose 953 windows were built in 1799 so the women of the court could watch the street unseen, is a short walk from both.

Amber early — the pre-Jaipur capital, begun in 1592, rising up the hillside in courtyards with the Sheesh Mahal's mirror work at the top — and away by ten. Then north-west into drier country, five and a half to six hours, as the fields give out and the Thar begins. Bikaner was founded in 1488 on a caravan route, and the first stop is on its edge rather than in it: the National Research Centre on Camel at Jorbeer, a working government breeding and study station of several hundred animals, which admits visitors from midday in winter and from two in summer, until six, and so belongs to the arrival afternoon rather than a departure morning. The camel milk is genuinely worth trying. The evening is free.

Junagarh in the morning — unusually for Rajasthan a fort on the plain rather than a hill, never taken in four centuries, with interiors better preserved than most in the state: the Anup Mahal in gold leaf, the Phool Mahal, the lacquered Badal Mahal. Two hours is right for it. Then west across the Thar, around 330 km and six hours, past Pokhran and the Ramdevra shrine, into Jaisalmer by evening with the fort catching the last of the light.

Jaisalmer Fort was built in 1156 and around two thousand people still live inside it, which makes it one of a tiny number of inhabited forts anywhere — houses, shops and Jain temples within the walls, and the whole of it in a yellow sandstone that turns gold in the low sun. Patwon ki Haveli and Salim Singh ki Haveli in the town below are the great merchant houses, carved with a fineness that is hard to credit in stone. Gadisar lake in the late afternoon.

West to the dunes beyond Sam in the afternoon, and a night under canvas — camel or jeep out onto the sand for the sunset, dinner and Rajasthani folk music at the camp, and the desert sky afterwards, which away from the town is worth staying up for. Camps here range widely in standard and the itinerary uses established ones; what none of them is, is silent — this is a popular stretch of desert and the camps sit within earshot of each other.

East out of the Thar, around 285 km and five hours, with the landscape slowly recovering scrub and then fields. Into Jodhpur in the afternoon, where Mehrangarh stands 120 m above the old city on a rock — begun in 1459, never taken by siege, the cannonball marks of 1808 still in the gate, and a museum of palanquins, howdahs and miniature painting inside. Jaswant Thada, a marble cenotaph of 1899, sits just below it and is the better sunset.

A free morning. The Sardar Market clock tower and the lanes of the blue city below the fort are the obvious walk, and the spice and textile stalls there are a working market rather than a tourist one. Umaid Bhawan, the art deco palace on the hill east of the city, was finished in 1943 and part of it is open as a museum. Jodhpur airport is close to the centre, so a midday flight is comfortable.