| c. 2600–1900 BC | The Indus cities — brick streets, drains, a script nobody can read — flourish and are abandoned. | Nothing on this route. The nearest of their cities is Kalibangan, in the north of Rajasthan. |
| c. 400 BC–AD 400 | The Mahabharata and the Ramayana take written shape. They are texts, not events: the stories are older than the writing and have never stopped being retold. | Everything. Diwali (day 11) is the Ramayana’s last chapter; Krishna, who advises the hero of the Mahabharata, is on the dashboard. |
| AD 320–550 | The Gupta empire in the north — the period guides mean by “classical”: Sanskrit poetry, the number system that reached Europe as “Arabic” numerals, the first temples built in cut stone. | Only second-hand, in the temple form that later builders inherited. |
| 8th–10th c. | Rajput clans emerge across this country as the north fragments. The Guhilas of Mewar date themselves to 728. | The three houses whose forts you enter — Mewar at Udaipur, the Rathores at Jodhpur, the Kachwahas at Amber — all trace their line to about here, some with more pride than evidence. |
| 1192–1206 | Muhammad of Ghor’s armies take Delhi; his general Qutb-ud-din Aibak makes himself sultan in 1206. The Delhi Sultanate — five dynasties, 320 years. | Qutb Minar, day 4: begun 1199, finished by Aibak’s son-in-law in the 1220s, standing on a mosque built from the stone of demolished temples. |
| 1206–1526 | Sultans rule from Delhi, at their strongest as far as the south, at their weakest over a few districts. | Also day 4: the Hauz Khas reservoir and college (14th c.), the tombs in Lodhi Gardens (15th c.), Agrasen ki Baoli. |
| 1440s–1460s | The Rajput high tide. Kings west of the sultans build in stone on hills, out of reach. | Kumbhalgarh, begun 1443 by Rana Kumbha (day 6). Mehrangarh, begun 1459 by Rao Jodha (day 7). |
| 1526 | Babur wins at Panipat and founds the Mughal empire. He rules four years and spends most of them complaining about the heat. | Nothing of his survives here. |
| 1556–1605 | Akbar. He never learned to read, and he is the one who made the empire work — by taxing farmland properly and by marrying and hiring Rajputs instead of only fighting them. | Agra Fort’s red walls, from 1565 (day 11). Fatehpur Sikri, his built-and-abandoned capital, 1571–85 (day 10, if daylight allows). Amber palace, begun 1592 by his general Man Singh (day 10). Humayun’s Tomb, built by his father’s widow and finished about 1570 (day 2). |
| 1605–1627 | Jahangir. A connoisseur more than a builder; his wife Nur Jahan issued orders in her own name and had coins struck with it. | Her tomb for her father in Agra, 1622–28 — the first Mughal building faced entirely in marble and inlaid with coloured stone. (photos) It is a rehearsal for the Taj, and an easy add to day 11. |
| 1628–1658 | Shah Jahan. The builder. Marble, symmetry, and a new capital. | The Taj Mahal, 1632–53 (day 11). Shahjahanabad — the Red Fort, 1639–48, and the Jama Masjid, finished 1656 (day 3). The same years, a different empire: Udaipur’s Jagdish temple is 1651 (day 5). |
| 1658–1707 | Aurangzeb deposes his father, kills his brothers, and reigns 49 years — the empire at its largest and its most broke, fighting wars in the south it could not win. | Agra Fort (day 11), where his father spent eight years imprisoned with a view of the Taj. |
| 1707–1757 | Mughal collapse. Persians sack Delhi in 1739 and take the Peacock Throne; the provinces stop sending money. | Jaipur, founded in the gap by Jai Singh II in 1727, on a grid, with his stone observatory of 1728–34 (day 9). |
| 1757 | The East India Company — a trading firm with an army — wins at Plassey and starts collecting taxes in Bengal. | — |
| 1818 | The Rajput states sign with the Company: they keep their thrones, forts and titles, and give up foreign policy. | Why the families in the forts are still the families in the forts. |
| 1857–58 | The rebellion. The last Mughal, an elderly poet, is put on trial and exiled; the Company is wound up and the Crown takes over. | The Red Fort (day 3), which the army occupied and half demolished afterwards. |
| 1911–1931 | The capital moves from Calcutta to Delhi, and Lutyens builds a new imperial city beside the old ones. It is finished sixteen years before the British leave. | India Gate and the axis up to the president’s house, day 2 — your Delhi hotel sits on the edge of it. |
| 1947 | Independence on 15 August, and Partition with it: Punjab and Bengal cut in two, ten million people or more on the move, several hundred thousand killed at the least. Delhi’s population changed in a year. | Bangla Sahib and Old Delhi (day 3), both of which absorbed refugees by the trainload. |
| 1948, 1950 | Gandhi is shot in Delhi in January 1948. The constitution takes effect on 26 January 1950 and India becomes a republic. | Raj Ghat, day 3 — the platform where he was cremated. |
| 1971 | Parliament abolishes the privy purses, the state salaries paid to former princes since 1947, along with their remaining titles. | The reason the old ruling families went into the hotel trade — Rawla Narlai, where you sleep on day 6, and the manor at Rohet, the day-7 lunch stop. |