3 nights, Delhi
We'll be folding several centuries into our three days here in this unhurried-by-time city.
Day one in Old Delhi, where the chai comes from a stall that's been pouring it the same way for longer than anyone can date, and the rickshaw moves just slowly enough that you can actually watch the sarees go by. A perfumer builds a scent for you alone, the old way, nothing off a shelf, and we roll up our sleeves for seva, making chapatis in a langar that feeds tens of thousands a day, regardless of who they are or what they believe.
Day two belongs to one of the city's most beautiful neighbourhoods, full of designers and makers and beautiful things. And day three brings the museums, the monuments, the moments that take your breath away, Delhi somehow at its most grand and its most quiet.
By the time you leave, you've stopped sightseeing altogether. You're just present, which turns out to be the whole trick.
4 nights, Jaipur
Jaipur has no interest in your usual pace - mornings arrive slow and honey-thick, the Pink City stirring awake around you long before you've decided to join it.
There's a palace before the crowds arrive, when it's just stone and light and the particular quiet of a place that's outlasted every empire that built it. Then come the jewellery bazaars, where the pieces aren't souvenirs so much as the beginning of a story you'll be wearing for the rest of your life.
Followed by a day out to a village, where the sheer range of gemstones explains why people spend a lifetime collecting them. There's an Ayurvedic massage, because a trip like this should look after your body as well as your eye, and lunch at the chicest, pinkest palace restaurant in the city, the kind of room you'll be describing for years.
And there's a Vedic astrology reading, because some things you came all this way to hear.
