Punjab & Himachal: Golden Temple to Shimla

Met at the airport and driven to your hotel. After a rest, Old Delhi: Shah Jahan’s Jama Masjid, one of the largest mosques in India, and then a cycle-rickshaw through the lanes of Chandni Chowk, where the spice, silver and cloth bazaars have been trading for more than three centuries.

In the afternoon, Humayun’s Tomb, begun in the 1560s for the second Mughal emperor and the first of the great Mughal garden tombs, then a drive through Lutyens’s New Delhi past India Gate, the Parliament buildings and Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President’s house.

A day for the Golden Temple — the Harmandir Sahib, or Darbar Sahib — the holiest shrine of the Sikhs. Its gilded sanctum stands in the middle of the sacred pool that gave Amritsar its name, and the Gurbani kirtan, the singing of hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib, goes on from the opening of the doors before dawn until they close at night. Cover your head, leave your shoes at the gate and walk the marble path round the water.

Facing the temple across the causeway is the Akal Takht, the Throne of the Timeless One, founded by the sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind, in the seventeenth century as the seat of Sikh temporal authority. Before you leave, sit down on the floor at the langar, where volunteers serve a free meal to tens of thousands of people a day.

A short walk away is Jallianwala Bagh, the walled garden where on 13 April 1919 British troops under General Dyer fired on an unarmed crowd and killed hundreds. The bullet marks in the walls and the well into which people jumped are still there; the massacre turned a great many Indians against British rule for good.

A free day in the town they call Little Lhasa. Most people begin at the Tsuglagkhang, the Dalai Lama’s temple, with the Namgyal monastery beside it, where butter lamps burn in rows before the images. Then walk the kora, the path of prayer wheels and prayer flags that circles his residence through the pine forest.

Spend the afternoon in the lanes of McLeod Ganj, among the Tibetan bookshops, thangka painters and momo kitchens, or take the short walk out to Bhagsunag, with its old Shiva temple, its spring-fed pools and the waterfall above.

Back through the hills to the Kangra valley and Palampur, the tea capital of north India, on a plateau at the foot of the Dhauladhar range. Tea has been grown here since the middle of the nineteenth century, and the gardens come right to the edge of the town, with forests of pine and deodar above them and streams running down from the snows. The evening is yours: walk out through the tea gardens as the light goes on the mountains.

An early start for Rohtang Pass (3,978 m), 51 km above Manali on the road to Keylong. The road climbs through the forest past the Rahala falls and the meadows at Marhi into bare rock and snow, and from the top the mountains fall away on the far side into Lahaul, a drier world beyond the main Himalayan range.

Rohtang is closed on Tuesdays for road maintenance, needs a permit for each vehicle and shuts in winter and often in bad weather, so this day is planned around it (see Before you book). Back down to Manali for the evening.

The longest drive of the journey, down the Kullu valley and south through Mandi and Bilaspur to Shimla, the capital of Himachal Pradesh. From 1864 it was the summer capital of British India, and the government moved up here each year for the hot months. The rest of the day is yours: walk out on the Mall in the evening, when half the town is strolling there.

Down out of the hills and back to the plains, with a stop at Pinjore Gardens, also called the Yadavindra Gardens: a Mughal garden of the seventeenth century, about a hundred acres of terraces, water channels and fountains below the Shivalik hills. Then on to Delhi and your hotel for the last night.