A short drive on the expressway brings you to Agra and the sight you have probably been picturing for years. After you check in, you head to the Taj Mahal, and photos genuinely do not prepare you for the scale of it up close. Your guide points out the details most people miss: the inlaid flowers, the verses in stone, the way the marble shifts colour through the day. You also visit Agra Fort, the huge red fortress where the emperor who built the Taj spent his last years looking out at it across the river.

The drive itself is part of the day. You stop at Fatehpur Sikri, a red sandstone city the Mughals built and then walked away from within a couple of decades, so it stands almost exactly as it was left, quiet and complete. A little further on you can climb down into Chand Baori at Abhaneri, a 9th-century stepwell with thousands of steps zigzagging down its walls, one of the most striking structures in India. You reach Jaipur by evening.

Jaipur was painted terracotta pink for a royal visit in the 1870s and never changed back. You start above the city at Amer Fort, riding up by jeep to its mirrored halls and courtyards, with long views over the valley and the old walls running along the ridge. Down in town you have the City Palace, still home to Jaipur's royal family, and the Hawa Mahal, the honeycomb Palace of Winds the royal women once watched the street from. Jantar Mantar, a giant open-air observatory of stone instruments, is stranger and more interesting than it sounds. Save time for the bazaars. This is the place for block-print fabric, blue pottery and gemstones.

A short flight lifts you north to Amritsar, and the reason most people come is best seen after dark. In the evening you walk down the marble steps to the Golden Temple, its gold dome lit and mirrored in the still pool around it, pilgrims moving quietly past and a low hum of prayer carrying across the courtyard. It is calm, welcoming and hard to forget. If the timing works out, you can watch the Palki Sahib, the nightly ceremony where the Sikh holy book is carried to its resting place.

Today has two very different sides. You visit Jallianwala Bagh, the garden where a peaceful crowd was fired on in 1919, a quiet and sobering place with the bullet marks still in the walls. You can return to the Golden Temple by day and, if you like, step into the langar, the community kitchen that serves a free meal to anyone who comes, tens of thousands of people every day. In the late afternoon you drive to the Wagah Border for the Beating Retreat, the flag-lowering ceremony where soldiers from India and Pakistan high-kick and posture to a roaring, flag-waving crowd. Finish with Punjabi food, which plenty of travellers rate the best in the country.

After breakfast you fly or take the train back to Delhi. The rest of the day is easy. Settle into your hotel, and if there is shopping or a sight you missed earlier, now is the time.

Your last morning is free until your driver takes you to the airport for the journey home. You leave with the Taj Mahal, the palaces of Jaipur and the glow of the Golden Temple all somewhere in the mix.