← All days · Practical: bookings & refs
Day 12 of 13 · Monday 9 Nov
Agra → Delhi
Return leg — in booking. The flight leaves at 07:20 tomorrow, so tonight should end near the airport.
where you sleep what you see · tap a marker for its deep dive
≈200 km, 3–4 h door to door. Booked transfer or train (Gatimaan Express) — being decided.
Sleep next to IGI T3 — the sensible move before a 07:20 departure. Day 13 starts around 04:30.
Last rupees, sim card off, boarding passes downloaded.
On this day
What you are looking at, roughly in the order the day meets it.
-
Sikandra — Akbar’s tomb — on the old Grand Trunk Road out of Agra: the emperor’s red sandstone tomb, its gardens grazed by blackbuck and patrolled by langurs. The four white marble minarets on its gateway are often read as the rehearsal for the Taj’s, a generation early.
Passed, or worth a stop, if the transfer leaves by the NH19 side — the route is still being decided.
-
The Yamuna Expressway — 165 km of concrete built as India’s showcase expressway, dead straight across the doab farmland. Notorious for November morning fog — a late-morning start is the sensible version.
If the transfer goes by road, which is still being decided.
-
Mathura and Vrindavan — the expressway passes the turnoffs for Krishna’s birthplace and the temple town of his childhood, together one of Hinduism’s great pilgrimage clusters; the day after Diwali is Govardhan Puja, a major day in exactly this region, so pilgrim traffic is likely.
Expressway route only.
-
Buddh International Circuit — near Greater Noida the expressway runs past the grandstands of India’s Formula 1 track, which hosted the Indian Grand Prix 2011–13 and has been looking for a purpose since.
Expressway route only.
-
Jewar — Noida International Airport — Delhi’s second hub, opened in spring 2026 beside the expressway and run by the operator of Zurich’s airport on a forty-year concession. Planned to grow to seventy million passengers a year — close to what Heathrow handles today.
Expressway route only.
-
The Gatimaan Express alternative — India’s first 160 km/h train, Agra Cantt to Delhi in about 100 minutes, which would turn the transfer day mostly into a Delhi afternoon.
The other half of the open booking — if rail wins, the road items above do not happen.
-
Aerocity — the night ends in the hotel district built beside the airport: an enclave of glass hotels ten minutes from Terminal 3, existing purely for mornings like tomorrow’s.
Where to eat
Breakfast is at the hotel. Researched picks, not a directory — the small print names who recommends each. Names link to Google Maps.
Dinner
-
Daryaganj ₹₹₹ · Worldmark 1, Aerocity — Run by the grandson of Moti Mahal’s co-founder — the original-recipe 1947 butter chicken and dal makhani. The Jaggi family, credited with inventing butter chicken; widely covered in the Indian food press.
Walkable from the Aerocity hotel strip — the sensible last-night dinner before the 04:30 start.