Diwali - A Festival of Lights (Rajasthan, India)

Fifteen nights through Rajasthan to the Taj Mahal, guided, on a Royal Enfield, timed to coincide with Diwali.

Diwali is the reason for the dates. The festival of lights runs over several days in the autumn, with oil lamps along every parapet and fireworks over the forts, and Rajasthan does it on a scale that is hard to overstate.

Mandawa and Bikaner open the route, with the pietra dura inlay and the palaces inside Junagarh. Jaisalmer follows, the walled desert city, then the Thar riding days and Udaipur, the city of lakes. Bijaipur Castle comes next in the Vindhyachal forests, with its ayurvedic spa and dinners cooked to royal recipes, then Pachewar, where a three-hundred-year-old fort is now a hotel and the village around it works in blue pottery, tie-dye and terracotta, with the Gadia-Luhar, a nomadic blacksmith community, still passing through. Meals there are cooked at home and eaten with the resident family. Jaipur and Agra close the circuit.

The bike hire is included; the full inclusions were not itemised on the operator’s page and are worth confirming at booking. Diwali falls in October or November, which is the start of the best riding weather in Rajasthan. Sixteen days follows the operator’s standard Forts and Palaces route with the festival dropped into the middle of it, and the Pachewar night is the part that distinguishes it from the others. The riding is flat and almost entirely sealed, with modest daily distances, which leaves the forts and the festival as the substance of the trip rather than the roads.