I N D I A ❖ R A J A S T H A N
Royal-Style Luxury on the Rails of Rajputana
❖ New Delhi → Jaipur → Jodhpur → Jaisalmer → Udaipur → Agra ❖
| 7 nights
Duration |
8 Palaces
Themed Saloons |
1982
Year of First Journey |
10
Royal Destinations |
The whistle sounds. The carriages shudder with a deep, ceremonial thrum. And then, as slowly and deliberately as a maharaja departing on a royal procession, the Palace on Wheels eases away from Delhi Safdarjung station into the golden evening light of Rajasthan. For the next seven nights, you will sleep in a moving palace, wake to deserts and fortresses and mirrored lakes, dine as the kings of Rajputana once dined, and journey through a landscape so saturated with colour, history, and mythological grandeur that it seems less like a place than a dream of what India must always have been.
The Palace on Wheels is not merely a train. It is a time machine, a mobile heritage hotel, and one of the great journeys on Earth. Since its inaugural run in January 1982, it has been carrying travellers through the royal heartland of Rajasthan, the Land of Kings, in a style that evokes, deliberately and magnificently, the era of the princely states when the maharajas of Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Bikaner, and Jaipur ruled over kingdoms of breath taking splendour. Every carriage is a palace. Every meal is a banquet. Every destination is a monument to the most flamboyant chapter in Indian history.
| “To travel on the Palace on Wheels is to understand what travel was before it became tourism. It is a journey in the oldest sense — an adventure in which the distance between departure and arrival is filled with wonder.”
— National Geographic Traveller |
❖ Part I: The History of a Royal Train
Origins: The Maharajas’ Own Carriages
The story of the Palace on Wheels begins long before the train itself, in the golden age of the Indian princely states, when the maharajas of Rajputana maintained their own private railway carriages as extensions of their palaces on wheels. These carriages, fitted out with bedroom suites, drawing rooms, dining saloons, and kitchens of extraordinary opulence, were the private conveyances of rulers who measured their dignity in part by the splendour of their travel.
The carriages of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Gaekwad of Baroda, and the maharajas of Jodhpur, Mysore, and Jaipur were legendary in their extravagance. Silver fittings, hand-woven carpets, carved teak panelling, inlaid furniture, and crystal chandeliers, the best of them rivalled the state rooms of European royal trains. Many were custom-built in England or in the railway workshops of the princely states themselves. They were symbols of sovereign power on rails.
After Indian independence in 1947 and the subsequent integration of the princely states into the Republic of India, these magnificent carriages fell into disuse. The maharajas lost their privy purses, their kingdoms, and eventually their need for private royal transport. The carriages, some of the most extraordinary rolling stock ever built, sat in railway yards, slowly deteriorating, their veneers fading and their silver tarnishing.
The Birth of Palace on Wheels (1982)
The idea of rescuing these carriages and transforming them into a luxury tourist train belonged to the Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation (RTDC) and the Indian Railways, who conceived the project jointly in the late 1970s. The ambition was threefold: to preserve the heritage of the princely railway carriages; to create a world-class tourism product showcasing the monuments and culture of Rajasthan; and to attract the international luxury travel market to a state whose fortresses, palaces, and desert landscapes were among the most spectacular in Asia.
The Palace on Wheels made its inaugural journey on 26th January 1982, Republic Day, the most significant date in the Indian national calendar, a deliberate choice that framed the train as both a heritage project and a patriotic statement. The original train used restored carriages from the former princely states, each named and decorated to evoke the character of the royal house it represented. The response was immediate and enthusiastic. Within its first decade, the Palace on Wheels had been named one of the ten best luxury train journeys in the world by multiple international travel organisations.
Renovation and the New Palace on Wheels (2009)
After decades of successful operation, the original carriages, however beautifully maintained, had aged, and the RTDC undertook a comprehensive renovation of the train between 2006 and 2009. The result was effectively a new Palace on Wheels, with purpose-built carriages designed to evoke the architecture and decorative arts of the Rajput princely states while incorporating the infrastructure of a modern five-star hotel: en-suite bathrooms, air conditioning, Wi-Fi, satellite television, and contemporary plumbing and electrics, all concealed behind period-appropriate décor of carved wood, inlaid mirror-work, and handwoven fabrics.
The renovated train was unveiled to great acclaim and quickly reclaimed its position at the apex of the Indian luxury rail market. It continues to operate today as one of the most celebrated train journeys in the world, regularly ranked alongside the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, the Rovos Rail through South Africa, and Japan’s Seven Stars as among the finest rail experiences on the planet.
World Recognition: A Train Among the Greatest Journeys |
| The Palace on Wheels has won the World Travel Award for ‘World’s Leading Luxury Train’ multiple times, has appeared on virtually every major travel publication’s list of the world’s greatest journeys, and has been featured in CNN Travel, Conde Nast Traveller, Lonely Planet, and National Geographic as one of the defining luxury travel experiences of the modern era. It operates from September to April, in the cooler months of the Rajasthani year. |
❖ Part II: The Train — A Palace in Motion
Architecture and Design: The Eight Saloons
The Palace on Wheels consists of fourteen carriages, including eight residential saloons, two dining cars, a bar and lounge car, a spa car, and service carriages. Each of the eight residential saloons is named after and decorated in the style of a different Rajasthani princely state, Alwar, Bharatpur, Bikaner, Bundi, Dhaulpur, Dungarpur, Jaisalmer, and Kishangarh, creating a train that is simultaneously a journey through space and a tour through the distinct artistic traditions of Rajasthan’s royal houses.
Step into the Jaisalmer saloon and you are in a world of pale golden sandstone tones, latticed jharokha window screens, and geometric patterns drawn from the desert fortress city’s famous havelis. The Bikaner saloon draws on the blue and white tile-work and camel-bone inlay that characterise the Bikaner royal court aesthetic. Each saloon is a different chapter of the same magnificent story, the story of Rajput art and royal patronage at the height of its splendour.
The Cabins: Your Palace Chamber
Each residential saloon contains four guest cabins, called ‘chambers’ in the palace idiom, fitted with twin or double beds that convert for day use, en-suite bathrooms with running hot water, individually controlled air conditioning, a personal safe, a writing desk, a minibar, and large windows designed for landscape viewing. The furnishings are handcrafted: carved teak beds, hand-block-printed cotton fabrics, silver-framed mirrors, hand-painted porcelain lamps, and miniature Rajasthani paintings on the walls.
The attention to detail in each chamber is extraordinary. The bed linens are of Egyptian cotton; the toiletries are prepared with traditional Indian botanical ingredients; the uniformed personal attendant (butler) assigned to each saloon is on call around the clock. The effect is of sleeping in a room that has been prepared for a maharaja, which is, of course, precisely the intention.
The Maharaja and Maharani Restaurants
The two dining cars of the Palace on Wheels, the Maharaja Restaurant and the Maharani Restaurant, are among the finest rolling restaurants in the world. Each seats approximately forty passengers in an atmosphere of ceremonial splendour: carved wooden arches, embroidered silk panels, silver candelabra, hand-painted crockery, and the quiet murmur of a professional kitchen producing food of exceptional quality.
The cuisine is proudly and comprehensively Rajasthani, a royal culinary tradition of remarkable depth and sophistication. Dishes such as laal maas (slow-cooked lamb in a sauce of dried red Mathania chillies), dal baati churma (the signature Rajasthani lentil and baked wheat dumpling combination), gatte ki sabzi (gram flour dumplings in a yoghurt-based gravy), and ker sangri (the desert bean and berry pickle unique to Rajasthan) represent a cuisine developed in desert conditions with ingredients of extraordinary character. Multi-course banquets, drawing on Mughal, Rajput, and British colonial culinary traditions, are served with the ceremony and grace of a state dinner.
| “Dinner on the Palace on Wheels is not a meal. It is a performance — of hospitality, of culture, of the extraordinary depth of a culinary tradition that has been developing for five hundred years in the kitchens of people who measured their greatness partly by what they served their guests.”
— Conde Nast Traveller, India |
The Rajah Club Lounge and Bar
The Rajah Club, the train’s bar and lounge car, is the social heart of the Palace on Wheels. Decorated in the style of a maharaja’s reception room, with velvet sofas, brass lamp-fittings, jewel-coloured cushions, and carved wooden alcoves, it serves as the gathering place for pre-dinner drinks, late-night conversation, and the informal exchanges between passengers that give every long train journey its particular social texture.
The bar offers an extraordinary range of Indian spirits, wines (from Rajasthan’s own emerging wine regions as well as international selections), cocktails prepared with traditional Indian ingredients rose water, cardamom, saffron, and fresh mint, and non-alcoholic preparations of equal sophistication. A string quartet or sitar player provides live music on selected evenings, and the atmosphere on these occasions, the train moving through the Indian night, the music playing, the desert or the forests passing in darkness outside, is one of those experiences that travel journalists consistently struggle to convey in words.
The Espa Wellness Spa
The Palace on Wheels includes a dedicated spa car, the ESPA Wellness facility, offering a range of treatments that draw on the traditional Ayurvedic and royal beauty traditions of Rajasthan. Treatments include full-body abhyanga massages using warm medicated oils, Ayurvedic shirodhara (oil poured continuously over the forehead, inducing deep relaxation), Rajasthani ubtan body scrubs using ingredients of chickpea flour, turmeric, and sandalwood, and contemporary massage and facial treatments. The spa car operates by appointment throughout the journey, and the experience of receiving a traditional Ayurvedic treatment while moving through the Rajasthani landscape is, in the words of one travel writer, profoundly, unexpectedly moving.
❖ Part III: The Journey — Seven Nights Through the Land of Kings
The Complete Itinerary
The Palace on Wheels departs from Delhi Safdarjung station every Wednesday evening during the October-to-March season, completing its circuit of Rajasthan and returning to Delhi the following Wednesday morning, seven nights, eight days, ten destinations, and approximately 3,000 kilometres of the most historically and visually extraordinary landscape in South Asia.
| Day | Destination | Highlights |
| Day 1 | Delhi Departure | Ceremonial boarding at Safdarjung Station. Welcome dinner as the train begins its overnight journey. |
| Day 2 | Jaipur — The Pink City | City Palace, Amber Fort, Hawa Mahal (Palace of Winds), Jantar Mantar observatory. Elephant ride to Amber. |
| Day 3 | Chittorgarh & Udaipur | Chittorgarh Fort, the most epic of all Rajput fortresses. Udaipur: City Palace, Lake Pichola, sunset boat ride. |
| Day 4 | Jaisalmer — The Golden City | Sonar Kila (Golden Fort), Patwon-ki-Haveli, camel safari into the Sam Sand Dunes at sunset. |
| Day 5 | Jodhpur — The Blue City | Mehrangarh Fort (one of the world’s great fortresses). Umaid Bhawan Palace. The blue lanes of the old city. |
| Day 6 | Bharatpur & Ranthambore | Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary (Keoladeo). Ranthambore National Park, tiger reserve jeep safari. |
| Day 7 | Agra — The Mughal Capital | Taj Mahal at dawn. Agra Fort. Fatehpur Sikri, the abandoned Mughal city. |
| Day 8 | Return to Delhi | Arrival at Delhi Safdarjung Station. Farewell breakfast as the journey concludes. |
Jaipur: The Pink City and the Amber Fort
The Palace on Wheels arrives in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan and one of the great planned cities of the world, in the early morning, when the rose-pink sandstone of its palaces and havelis glows in the slanted light with an almost supernatural warmth. Jaipur was founded in 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, an astronomer-king who laid out his capital on a strict grid plan based on ancient Hindu principles of town planning, one of the very few pre-colonial Indian cities built to a rational geometric design.
The day in Jaipur encompasses the City Palace, a complex of courtyards, pavilions, museums, and royal residences still partially occupied by the Jaipur royal family, the Jantar Mantar (the largest stone astronomical observatory in the world, built by Jai Singh II, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the Hawa Mahal or Palace of Winds (its extraordinary five-story facade of 953 small windows designed so that the women of the royal zenana could observe street processions while remaining in purdah), and the Amber Fort,the Kachhwaha maharajas’ hilltop fortress-palace above the Maota Lake, reached by elephant or by jeep along a zigzagging ramp.
Jaisalmer: The Golden Fortress Rising from the Desert
Nothing quite prepares the passenger for their first sight of Jaisalmer. The train arrives in the morning, and as it slows across the flat, shimmering plain of the Thar Desert, a golden fortress rises from the earth, Sonar Kila, the Golden Fort, built entirely of yellow Jaisalmer sandstone that glows in the desert light with the colour of ripe wheat. It is one of the most extraordinary man-made landscapes in India, and it is still a living city: approximately 3,000 people live within its medieval walls, as they have for nearly a thousand years.
The afternoon excursion to the Sam Sand Dunes, forty kilometres from Jaisalmer, where the Thar Desert achieves its most cinematic form in sweeping crescent dunes that change colour through the afternoon from gold to deep orange to blood-red as the sun descends, is one of the Palace on Wheels’s defining experiences. Passengers ride camels to the summit of the dunes as the sun sets, the sky above the Thar turning colours that no paint has ever quite matched, and the silence of the desert, vast, complete, astonishing, settles around them.
Jodhpur: The Fortress That Defied the Sky
Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur is, by the estimation of many architectural historians, the most impressive fortress in India, and India is a country of extraordinary fortresses. It rises from a sheer cliff of rock 125 metres above the blue city of Jodhpur, its walls up to 36 metres high and 21 metres thick, its seven successive gates each equipped to withstand a different form of siege. From its battlements, the city below, painted blue by Brahmin families who traditionally coloured their homes this way and whose tradition became the city’s identity, spreads to every horizon in shades of indigo and periwinkle and Prussian blue. The effect is one of the most visually stunning urban landscapes on Earth.
The fort’s museums contain the most comprehensive collection of Rajput royal artefacts in existence: elephant howdahs of solid gold, palanquins of ivory and silver, armour of extraordinary craftsmanship, miniature paintings of heart-stopping delicacy, and royal cradles of such ornate construction that they constitute works of art in their own right. Jodhpur’s Umaid Bhawan Palace, built between 1928 and 1943 and partially operating today as a luxury hotel, is the largest private residence in the world, a monument to the last extravagance of the princely era.
Ranthambore: The Tiger Kingdom
One of the most thrilling experiences on the Palace on Wheels itinerary is the early-morning jeep safari through Ranthambore National Park, one of India’s premier tiger reserves and the setting for some of the most celebrated wildlife photography in the world. Ranthambore’s tigers are famously bold: unlike those in most Indian reserves, they have grown accustomed to the presence of safari vehicles and are regularly seen in broad daylight, lounging on the banks of lakes, walking along forest roads, or hunting deer in the open meadows around the park’s ancient fort.
Ranthambore Fort, a World Heritage Site that rises dramatically from the forest within the park, is itself extraordinary: a medieval Chahamana stronghold from which Mughal emperors once hunted tigers and where the wildlife now reclaims what humans abandoned. To see a tiger walking in the shadow of a thousand-year-old fort wall is an experience that condenses the entire complexity of India’s history, wilderness, beauty, and deep time into a single unforgettable image.
Agra: The Taj Mahal at Dawn
The Taj Mahal at dawn is a different object from the Taj Mahal at any other time of day. In the first light, when the sky is still pale and the mist lies in the garden and the white marble catches the rising sun in shades of pink and gold that shift continuously as the light strengthens, the building achieves something that all the superlatives heaped upon it over four centuries have only inadequately described. It is not merely beautiful. It is transcendent, a building that appears to resolve, for a moment, the question of what beauty is for.
Palace on Wheels passengers are brought to the Taj Mahal in the early morning, before the main crowds arrive, with their breakfast served in the gardens, one of the great moments of civilised travel. The day also includes the Agra Fort, the red sandstone Mughal citadel that served as the seat of the empire under Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, and the haunted grandeur of Fatehpur Sikri, the abandoned Mughal capital built by Akbar on the shores of a lake that dried up within decades, leaving the entire city perfectly preserved in its emptiness, the most complete surviving example of Mughal imperial architecture in existence.
❖ Part IV: Travel Guide — Practical Information
Cabin Categories and Pricing
The Palace on Wheels offers three categories of accommodation, all characterised by the same heritage design ethos but differing in space, facilities, and the level of personalised service.
| Super Deluxe Cabin | The standard category, a spacious en-suite chamber with twin or double beds, individually themed interior, personal attendant, minibar, writing desk, and landscape windows. Occupancy: 1 or 2 guests. |
| Deluxe Cabin | Slightly more compact than Super Deluxe. Same heritage décor and full en-suite facilities. Ideal for solo travellers or couples seeking excellent value within the Palace on Wheels experience. |
| Junior Suite | Expanded living space with a separate sitting area, premium furnishings, priority dining reservations, and enhanced personal butler service. The most spacious accommodation on the train. |
| Single Supplement | A supplement applies for solo occupancy. Single travellers sharing a twin cabin may be paired by the RTDC on request, subject to availability. |
Inclusions and What Is Covered
| Accommodation | Seven nights in a themed heritage cabin aboard the train |
| All Meals | Full board — all breakfasts, lunches, and dinners included |
| All Excursions | All listed guided excursions at each destination included |
| Entry Fees | All monument entry fees and guide fees included |
| Spa Access | One complimentary spa treatment per passenger |
| Cultural Programmes | All on-board live music, cultural performances, and events included |
| Wi-Fi & Entertainment | Onboard Wi-Fi connectivity and in-cabin satellite TV included |
| Transfers | All road transfers between the train and excursion sites included |
| NOT Included | Flights to/from Delhi; alcoholic beverages; personal shopping; tips (discretionary); travel insurance; visa fees |
Seasons and Best Time to Travel
The Palace on Wheels operates from September to April, the cooler, more comfortable months of the Rajasthani year. The peak season runs from October through March, when daytime temperatures across Rajasthan are ideal for outdoor sightseeing (typically 15–25°C) and the nights are cool and clear. November, December, and January are generally considered the finest months: the air is crystalline, the light extraordinary, and the desert at its most hospitable.
The train does not operate during the Indian summer and monsoon seasons (May to August), when temperatures in the Thar Desert can exceed 45°C and conditions are unsuitable for comfortable outdoor excursions. The October season opening is celebrated with particular ceremony, and the final departures of March carry a reflective, end-of-an-era quality that many passengers find deeply affecting.
Planning Your Journey: Essential Facts |
| Departure: Every Wednesday, Delhi Safdarjung Station, 5:00 PM | Return: Following Wednesday morning, Delhi Safdarjung Station | Season: September to April | Minimum Age: No restriction, but the journey involves extensive walking at heritage sites | Dress Code: Smart casual during the day; formal or traditional Indian dress for gala dinners (one per journey) | Languages: English, Hindi | Operated By: Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation (RTDC) in partnership with Indian Railways | Bookings: Via RTDC offices in Jaipur, Delhi, or authorised international tour operators |
❖ Part V: Legacy and Cultural Significance
Preserving the Rajput Heritage
The Palace on Wheels occupies a unique cultural position as one of the most effective heritage preservation projects in Indian tourism. By creating a luxury product that is inseparable from the architecture, design, cuisine, music, and material culture of the Rajput princely states, the train has created both an economic incentive and a living context for the preservation of crafts, traditions, and artistic practices that might otherwise have been lost.
The skilled craftspeople who produce the hand-block-printed fabrics, hand-carved wooden fittings, hand-painted ceramics, and hand-woven textiles that furnish the train’s cabins are all working within living craft traditions that stretch back centuries. The musicians who perform in the Rajah Club Bar are custodians of classical Rajasthani performance traditions. The cooks who prepare the royal Rajasthani banquets are preserving a culinary heritage that the homogenisation of Indian restaurant food had been slowly eroding. The Palace on Wheels, in this sense, is a cultural institution as much as a travel product.
Rajasthan as a Travel Destination
The success of the Palace on Wheels has been instrumental in establishing Rajasthan as one of the most visited regions in Asia and one of the ten most popular tourist destinations in India. The state’s golden triangle of Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Udaipur now attracts millions of visitors annually, and the infrastructure of luxury tourism that has grown up around these cities, the palace hotels, the heritage havelis, the wildlife resorts, and the cultural experiences, owes a significant debt to the pioneering luxury positioning of the Palace on Wheels in the 1980s.
Rajasthan is now synonymous, in the international travel imagination, with a particular vision of India: vivid, royal, ancient, and heroic. This is the India of fortresses and desert caravans, of women in brilliant saris against ochre walls, of peacocks in the courtyards of palaces, of miniature paintings and folk musicians and the extraordinary light of an evening sky over the Thar Desert. The Palace on Wheels curates this vision with consummate skill, and the result, for the passengers who make the journey, is something rarer and more lasting than a holiday. It is, in the fullest sense, an experience.
| 40+
Years of Operation |
~500
Guests per Season |
8
UNESCO Sites on Route |
No. 1
World’s Leading Luxury Train |
| “There are journeys that take you places, and there are journeys that take you into another world entirely. The Palace on Wheels belongs to the second kind. You board it in the twenty-first century, and you arrive somewhere much older, much more vivid, and much more alive.”
— Travel + Leisure Magazine |
Seven nights. Eight palaces in motion. Ten cities rising from the desert and the lake shores and the ancient plains of the subcontinent. The Palace on Wheels is, at its most fundamental, a proposition about what travel can be when it aspires to something more than the efficient movement of people between points of interest. It proposes that the journey itself is the destination, that the sound of the train moving through the Indian night, the smell of cardamom tea brought to your chamber as the sun rises over the Thar, the sight of a tiger moving through the ruins of a medieval fort, the feel of warm Rajasthani sandstone under your hand as you stand on the battlements of Mehrangarh and look out over the blue city, these are not incidental to the experience. They are the experience.
The maharajas of Rajputana built their kingdoms on the proposition that beauty and grandeur were not luxuries but necessities, that a life lived without magnificence was a life only half lived. The Palace on Wheels carries that proposition forward into the twenty-first century, seven nights at a time, through some of the most magnificent landscape and history that this ancient, extraordinary country has to offer.
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