Teen-Active Golden Triangle | Experience My India

Experience My India builds the circuit for families with teenagers, from Rs 60,000 per person (6-day, 4 star, twin sharing), routed so the dullest drive of the trip becomes the best day of it. Two things you need before you plan anything. One: India's first zipline sits on the Delhi to Jaipur road. Flying Fox at Neemrana Fort Palace, about 122 km from Delhi and roughly two hours up the NH48, runs five lines over a fifteenth-century fort, the longest at 400 metres, in a two to two and a half hour tour. Most operators drive teenagers past it to a fourth fort. We route the circuit anticlockwise and stop. Two, and nobody tells parents this: if your teenager is under 16, one of you is zipping. The rule is not supervision from the terrace. Under-16s must be accompanied on the zip tour by a participating parent or guardian at all times. One adult can cover up to eleven under-16s, so a group works. But if your fourteen-year-old wants the wire, you are going on the wire. Sixteen and seventeen-year-olds may zip unsupervised, which makes the difference between a fourteenth and a sixteenth birthday quite large on this particular day.

These are not age limits and they are not negotiable. Before you commit to a two-hour drive: Minimum height 1.4 m, about 4 ft 7 in. A tall ten-year-old qualifies; a short thirteen-year-old may not. Maximum weight 115 kg, 18 stone. Maximum waist 110 cm, about 43 inches. This one is rarely mentioned anywhere and it is the one that stops adults rather than teenagers. Closed-toe shoes, shorts or trousers, long hair tied back. No sandals. Pregnant women are advised against it. Under-18s need a parent or guardian's signed permission on the disclaimer, and under-16s need that adult on the wire with them. Measure and weigh at home. The operator will not bend this at the gate and neither should they.

The standard Golden Triangle runs Delhi to Agra to Jaipur and back, which leaves the Delhi to Jaipur highway as a dead five or six hours at the end. With teenagers that is not a drive, it is a negotiation. Neemrana sits on that road. So we run it the other way: Delhi, then two hours to a fifteenth-century fort with five ziplines strung over it, then on to Jaipur. The worst drive of the trip becomes the day they talk about. Our palace and heritage page uses the same routing for entirely different reasons, which is a decent sign it is the right way round. You can also stay at the fort itself, which is a genuine 15th-century heritage property and cheaper than most people expect.

Flying Fox opens at 10 am, every day. After a week of being dragged out at 5.30 for a sunrise, the one thing on this itinerary that is actually for your teenager starts at a civilised hour. We build the week so there is exactly one dawn start, at the Taj, where it is genuinely worth it, and everything else lets them sleep. A teenager who has slept is a different travelling companion, and this is not a soft observation; it is the difference between the trip working and not.

Honestly, and not the brochure list: The zipline. It is the trip's headline and we are not pretending otherwise. Chand Baori, the stepwell on the Agra to Jaipur road: 3,500 steps of geometry, and the most photogenic thing in Rajasthan that is not the Taj. The Taj at sunrise, once. Even the most determined teenager goes quiet. Street food in Old Delhi, done properly with somebody who knows which stalls, which is our food walks page. Cycling or a river day, if the season allows, on our adventure extension. Wifi that works. Not a joke. Ask us about the hotels; it is a real selection criterion at this age and pretending otherwise helps nobody. What does not land: a fourth fort, a fifth museum, and being told to put the phone away in front of the one thing they actually wanted to photograph.

Per person, twin sharing, with a 20 percent service margin and 5 percent GST already inside the number. The zipline is third-party and passed through at the operator's real rate.

Teenagers pay the adult rate on the package, and from 15 they pay adult monument fees too, which is worth knowing since under-15s enter the Taj free. Foreign nationals add about Rs 2,665 for the higher monument fees (Taj Rs 1,100 vs Rs 50, Agra Fort Rs 650 vs Rs 45, Fatehpur Sikri Rs 610 vs Rs 50, Amber Rs 550 vs Rs 100). OCI cardholders pay Indian rates with the physical card.