Rajasthan: Your Questions Answered

Yes. All overseas visitors need a valid Indian visa. Your passport needs at least six months' validity from your arrival date and two blank pages. India also requires a digital e-Arrival Card, submitted online within 72 hours before you land.

Tipping is standard practice in India, and knowing the numbers saves a lot of second-guessing. For your private driver, Rs 800 to 1,000 per day as one total (not per person), best given as a single amount at the end of the trip. Guides are the same for a full day, around Rs 500 for a half day. Porters expect Rs 70 to 100 per bag and restaurants around 10% of the bill. On safari, roughly Rs 700 for your naturalist, Rs 300 for the driver and Rs 150 for the park guide per outing. Tips can be in rupees, pounds, dollars or euros. It's one of the few things you'll definitely need cash for.

Both, but nowadays with card doing most of the work. Cards are widely accepted at hotels, restaurants and larger shops. You'll need cash for markets, small purchases and tips. One thing that catches some people out: the rupee is a closed currency, so you can't bring it in or take it home. Change money at the airport when you arrive, or use ATMs in the cities, and your guide can help find one. Sterling and US dollars are the easiest to exchange.

We wear light cotton or linen in the day, layers for the evening. Winter nights can get properly cold, especially in the desert and on early morning safari drives. Temples need arms and legs covered, and shoes come off at many, so pack a scarf or shawl plus a pair of socks you don't mind getting dusty. Muted colours for game drives. When you book, we send you lots more information.

Rajasthan is one of India's most visited states and generally very welcoming. The way we build trips helps: a private car and driver throughout, guides we know personally, and our team on the ground just a phone call away. A few basics still apply, just like anywhere; after dark without your driver, take a licensed taxi, which your hotel will sort. Keep valuables in the hotel safe and carry only the cash you need for the day.

Rajasthani food is a real highlight. Laal maas if you eat meat, dal baati churma, thalis that keep coming, and vegetarians do very well here. Don't be put off street food either; our guides will steer you towards reputable stalls serving delicious, piping hot food. Stick to bottled water, skip the salads and ice, and you'll almost certainly be fine.

Yes, it’s magical for young children, with the right design, and this is where tailor-made really earns its keep. The things small children love about Rajasthan are real: kite-flying from a rooftop, rickshaw rides through the old city, puppet shows, spotting monkeys and camels from the car window. The things that need managing are real too: long drives, heat in the middle of the day, and forts for hours on end that are more fun for adults than for a four-year-old. So we build these trips differently, shorter hops, pool time every day, rural stays with space to run around, and one activity a day rather than three. Done that way, India with small children is far easier than most parents expect. Our Little Red Dot in India guide covers our approach.

Rajasthan is one of the best bits of India for them, honestly. Forts you can properly clamber around, jeep safaris with a real chance of a tiger, zip lines over Mehrangarh, camel rides in the desert, street food challenges. It's a destination that competes with a phone, which is not nothing. Teenagers also tend to click with the scale of it, everything in Rajasthan is bigger and stranger than they expect. We've written more about this in Why we think Rajasthan is made for teenagers.

Sometimes, but less than you'd hope. Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur and Jaisalmer all have airports, and a handful of direct routes run between them, but schedules are fairly thin. Where a flight genuinely saves time, typically at the start or end of a route, we'll build one in. For the legs in between, the road is usually the better choice, and we plan the stops so it doesn't feel like one.

Timing and sequencing. Get to Amber Fort when it opens and you'll have an hour before the coaches arrive. The same trick works across the big forts and palaces. The other half is where you stay: a night in Shahpura, Narlai or Bundi puts you somewhere tour buses never reach. Also, consider travelling outside of high season — this makes a huge difference.

Plenty of Rajasthan barely sees a tourist. The painted havelis of Shekhawati, mansion after mansion covered in murals, sit just north of the main circuit and most visitors drive straight past. Bikaner is our quiet alternative to Jaisalmer: a proper desert town where Junagarh Fort sits unusually at ground level rather than on a hill, camel safaris head out with none of Jaisalmer's queues, and Narendra Bhawan, the last Maharaja's residence turned hotel, is a reason to stay in itself. Chambal is the wildest of the lot: once bandit country, its river ravines now hold gharial crocodiles, Gangetic dolphins and superb birdlife, and a boat safari here feels a long way from anyone's itinerary. In Nagaur, Ranvas puts you inside the walls of the great Ahhichatragarh Fort itself, and small royal seats like Karauli and Barli come with forts, family hosts and villages where visitors are still a novelty. Beyond Rajasthan itself, the overland route towards Varanasi passes places most itineraries fly straight over: Gwalior, whose vast hilltop fort Babur called the pearl among Indian fortresses, the riverside temples and cenotaphs of Orchha, and Lucknow, where the food alone, slow-cooked Awadhi dishes perfected in the nawabs' kitchens, justifies the stop. Tell us how far off the track you want to go and we'll build the trip around it.

Yes, and Jaipur is the place. We arrange hands-on workshops with printing families where you stamp your own patterns onto fabric to take home. It works brilliantly for children and adults. For the story of the craft, the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing near Amber Fort is one of our favourite small museums in India (closed Mondays and major holidays). Both fit easily into a day in Jaipur. Read our guide to hand block printing in Jaipur.

Several. The Pushkar Camel Fair, usually in November, is one of India's great spectacles but it gets busy. Diwali fills the cities with light. Holi, in early spring, is joyous but full-on, and we'll tell you honestly whether it suits your travelling style. Dates shift each year with the lunar calendar, so tell us early if one is on your list or if you would like us to make recommendations.

Some of our favourites, in no particular order. In Jaipur, The Johri in the bazaar for award-winning vegetarian food, Bar Palladio for what might be the best Italian in the city, and afternoon tea on the lawn at Rambagh Palace. In Jodhpur, it's all about rooftops: Indique at Pal Haveli and Darikhana at RAAS both look straight at Mehrangarh Fort. In Udaipur, Ambrai sits right on Lake Pichola with the palaces lit up across the water. And for a proper local Rajasthani thali, Laxmi Mishtan Bhandar in Jaipur's Bapu Bazar is very local, vegetarian only, and great value. We've written city-by-city guides for Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur with the full lists.

Yes, though in Rajasthan it takes a particular form. True homestays, staying in a family's own small local home, are more of a Kerala tradition, and we build them into our South India trips often. What Rajasthan offers is a little different: ancestral homes still run by the families who've owned them for generations. In the countryside that means places like Ramathra Fort, Shahpura Bagh, Kot Dunara and Chanoud Garh, and it works in the city too, Dera Mandawa in Jaipur is a family haveli where an evening might end flying kites from the rooftop before a cooking demonstration and dinner with your host. Dev Shree in Deogarh is a newer take on the same idea, a family-built home in a rural spot that feels genuinely remote and untouched, where your hosts cook with you and walk you through village life beyond the gates. Beautiful, comfortable places where your hosts are the family itself, and a walk through the village comes with someone everyone knows. Most of our Rajasthan itineraries include one or two of these stays.

Rajasthan is one of the best in India. Udaipur was practically built for it: lake views, palace hotels, candlelit rooftop dinners. The desert adds something few honeymoons have, dinner under the stars in real silence. Our Honeymoon in Rajasthan itinerary is a starting point we shape around you.

Easily, and many of our travellers do. Agra and Varanasi fold naturally into a northern route, the Taj Mahal and the ghats at dawn are each worth the detour many times over. You can easily combine with Kerala, Ladakh and Central India as well. And if it's sand you're after, see the next question.

Easily, and it's one of our favourite trip shapes: forts and palaces first, then pure relaxation. We want to be honest: India isn't known for pristine world class white beaches. Many of its loveliest are working beaches, fishermen bringing in the morning catch, boats drawn up on the sand, and if you take them on those terms they're full of life and character. Goa is the simplest add-on, a short flight from Rajasthan, with quiet stretches away from the famous strips. Kerala takes you further south for backwaters, palm-fringed shores and a completely different India, slower and greener after Rajasthan's colour. If it's the barefoot postcard you're after, look beyond the mainland. Sri Lanka is a favourite of ours: a direct flight from Delhi or Mumbai to Colombo, and the south coast is at its best through the very months Rajasthan is too, with leopards, whales and tea country thrown in. Then there’s The Maldives; a straightforward connection via Delhi or Mumbai, a week that resets everyone before the flight home. Tell us how you like your beaches, lively, remote or somewhere in between, and we'll build the trip to end on exactly the right note.