You land in Delhi to a fast-track VIP meet-and-greet, clearing arrivals with a dedicated concierge before your chauffeur transfers you to The Oberoi New Delhi overlooking the Delhi Golf Club and Humayun's Tomb.

The rest of the day is deliberately unstructured, a spa treatment, a swim, or a quiet dinner at one of the hotel's award-winning restaurants, so you arrive at the monuments rested rather than jet-lagged.

After breakfast you lift off for Agra by private helicopter, trading the four-hour road for a scenic aerial crossing of the Yamuna plains (subject to permits and weather; a chauffeured luxury car is the seamless fallback).

You check in to The Oberoi Amarvilas, the only hotel where every room and suite faces the Taj Mahal, just 600 metres from the east gate. The afternoon is yours to watch the marble change colour from your private balcony, glass of champagne in hand.

An evening visit to Mehtab Bagh across the river offers a first, uncrowded sunset silhouette of the mausoleum.

You enter the Taj Mahal at first light with a private historian-guide, when the marble glows pink-to-pearl and the complex is at its quietest, an unhurried couple of hours inside the world's greatest monument to love.

After breakfast your chauffeur drives you to Jaipur, with an optional pause at the UNESCO ghost-capital of Fatehpur Sikri en route.

You arrive at the Rambagh Palace, once the residence of the Maharaja of Jaipur, now a Taj-run palace hotel of peacock lawns, marble corridors and liveried service, in time for a royal high tea.

You begin before dawn with a hot-air-balloon flight over the Amber and Jaigarh forts and the Aravalli foothills, landing to a champagne breakfast in the fields (weather permitting).

Later, a private curator-led tour of the City Palace takes you into rooms usually closed to the public, followed by the honey-stone Amber Fort and its Sheesh Mahal mirror hall.

The day closes with a royal dinner, a candlelit table at Rambagh's Suvarna Mahal or a private in-palace chef's menu.

Your final morning is slow: a Jiva Spa ritual, a swim in the palace pool, or a last wander through Rambagh's gardens.

In the afternoon you transfer to the airport for your onward charter or scheduled flight to Delhi and home, your concierge handling every formality to the gate.