12 Ajmer Tourism Places to Visit: One-Day City Guide

Twenty to five, and the shutter at Soniji Ki Nasiyan was already down.

We'd done the Dargah at dawn, the fort, a long lunch, Nareli, and left the one thing everybody actually remembers about Ajmer until the end of the day, on the reasoning that it sits five minutes from the hotel and how long can a temple take. Long enough, as it turned out, because it shuts at half four and half four is what it means, not five like most of the country, and the man locking up was entirely unmoved by the argument that we'd come from Jaipur.

So that goes first. Before anything else on this page. Soniji Ki Nasiyan closes at 4.30pm. Build the day around it.

Ajmer Sharif Dargah

Everything here runs off the shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti. Including the traffic.

You come up a lane that narrows as it goes, and the lane is the first half of the experience whether you planned it that way or not. Rose petals in leaf bowls, stacked in pink piles that get restacked every twenty minutes. Chadar sellers holding up sheets of green and gold cloth. Attar shops with the little glass bottles lined up in rows, and one of them will always be open at the front so the whole stretch smells of rose and oudh and, underneath that, frying. Then sohan halwa, which Ajmer is genuinely known for and which is sold by weight out of tins in about nine shops on that one street. Buy it on the way out. Not the way in. It's heavy and you'll be carrying it round a fort.

Shoes come off before the Nizam Gate. The stalls on either side will mind them for ten or twenty rupees and they will ask a foreign visitor for more, so hand over a coin and keep walking rather than standing there arguing over the price of a cup of tea. Heads covered. Both men and women, and cloth is on sale every few metres if you've turned up without.

Past the Nizam Gate, which the Nizam of Hyderabad paid for in 1911, there's the Shahjahani Gate and then Buland Darwaza, and in the courtyard beyond that the two iron degs. Cauldrons, essentially, but enormous ones, the bigger of the two supposedly a gift from Akbar. Rice gets cooked in them and distributed. On a busy day you'll see it happening.

Entry is free. Always has been. Anyone can go in, of any faith, and on a normal morning you'll be standing next to Hindu families, Sikhs, tourists from Indonesia and a man from Hyderabad who does this trip every year. That isn't a brochure line, you can just watch it happen.

What isn't free, and what nobody warns you about, is the informal economy inside. Men will attach themselves to you and offer to guide you, or to take your offering up to the sanctum on your behalf. Some are connected to the shrine. Plenty aren't. None of it is compulsory, the offering isn't compulsory either, and if you do want the help then settle the amount before rather than after, because afterwards is a very different conversation.

When to go, and the one evening worth planning around

Seven in the morning on a Tuesday, there might be two hundred people in the courtyard and a couple of singers and room to sit down. Eleven on a Friday, the queue folds back on itself and you'll give up ninety minutes.

The exception is Thursday after sunset, when the qawwals sing properly. You will not move freely, you will not get near the inner chamber quickly, and it's still worth arranging a trip around. Two entirely different visits. Pick which one you want.

Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra

Half a kilometre uphill from the Dargah, and most people who come to Ajmer never go. Which is odd, because architecturally there's nothing else in the city in the same class.

The name translates as the shed of two and a half days, from a story that it went up in exactly that long back in 1192. It didn't. What's standing is a Sanskrit college that was taken apart and rebuilt as a mosque, and you can read the entire history off the columns. They're Hindu and Jain carvings. Reused, stacked, and a handful of them set upside down by workmen who either didn't notice or didn't care, and nobody has ever corrected it. Then across the front there's a screen of seven arches covered in calligraphy, laid over the top of all of it.

No roof. Eight hundred years.

It's free. ASI keep it, and it's usually near empty. Go before ten if you want the light, because it comes through the arches from the east and by afternoon the whole front is flat.

Taragarh Fort

Thirteen hundred feet up, one of the oldest hill forts in India, ₹25 for Indians and ₹150 for foreign visitors, gates open nine till five.

There's a footpath from past Adhai Din ka Jhopra that takes about ninety minutes of steady climbing, and there's the road, which is narrow and full of hairpins and wants a driver who's done it before. We take the road. Every time. A hatchback is fine. Anything larger and you'll spend the trip reversing into passing places for other people's cars.

What's at the top is mostly ruin — old walls, rock-cut water tanks, the dargah of Miran Saheb — and the honest reason to go is the view, which takes in the entire city with Anasagar spread flat below it and the Aravallis running back behind. Not the buildings. The view.

Is the climb worth it?

October to March, yes. April to September, take the road or leave it out. There is no shade anywhere on that path, people underestimate it every summer, and somebody always has to be helped back down.

Two you can skip

Prithviraj Smarak, on the Taragarh road, is a black equestrian statue on a stepped platform. If you grew up with Prithviraj Chauhan and Tarain it'll land. If you didn't? It's a statue on a hill. Twenty minutes you could have spent somewhere else. Take it on the way up to the fort or don't take it at all.

Mayo College is on half the lists for this city and it's a working boarding school you can't get into without permission arranged weeks ahead, which mostly doesn't come through. Drive the boundary road. Look at the marble frontage through the gates. Carry on.

Back to Soniji Ki Nasiyan

Red Temple. Golden Temple of Ajmer. Nasiyan Jain Temple. Same building, three names, and it's the one place in this city that stops people mid-sentence.

The bit at the front is a red sandstone Digambar Jain temple from 1865. Fine. Not the point. Behind it is a hall called Swarna Nagari, and inside that is a model of Ayodhya as Jain cosmology describes it, built up in gilded wood over decades, two full storeys of cities and processions and flying chariots hung on wires, and you look down on the whole thing from a gallery that runs round the upper level.

Photography is banned inside. People are annoyed about it for roughly ninety seconds and then stop being annoyed, because with no phones up it turns out you actually look at the thing.

Ten rupees for Indians, twenty-five for foreign visitors. Half an hour, forty minutes if you're the sort who reads every label.

If you've only got half a day in Ajmer and the Dargah is done, come here next. Not the fort, not the lake. Here.

The lake, the gardens and the pavilions

Ana Sagar, Daulat Bagh and the Baradari are strung along one waterfront, so it's a single stop of an hour and a half rather than three separate ones. Most visitors have no idea Ajmer has a lake at all until they're standing next to it.

The lake is twelfth century, dammed off the Luni by Arnoraja, who was Prithviraj Chauhan's grandfather. Artificial, and much bigger than people expect. There's an island in the middle and boats run out to it from the eastern side of the gardens for about ₹160 a head, which is a lot of money for fifteen minutes on the water, and people come back happy anyway.

Jahangir laid out Daulat Bagh on the bank. Lawns, old trees, a walk along the water, and from six in the evening most of Ajmer sitting on it eating something out of a paper cone. It's where you go when you've been upright since seven and need twenty minutes of not looking at a monument.

The five marble pavilions along the embankment are Shah Jahan's, added in 1637. Baradari means twelve doorways, an open-sided pavilion built to catch whatever breeze comes off the water. Fifteen minutes. But do them in the last hour of daylight, because the marble turns amber and the entire frontage changes. Best photograph in the city. It's free.

Season decides all three. October through March the lake is full. By late May the water has pulled back so far that you're looking at a brown flat with egrets standing on it, and the pavilions are sitting above mud. Same place. Not remotely the same visit.

Nareli Jain Temple

Seven kilometres out on the Jaipur road, and the most underrated thing in Ajmer by a long way.

It was finished in 2004, which some people treat as a disqualification. It isn't. White marble, cut to a standard that holds up against work three hundred years older, one large temple below and twenty-four small shrines stepping up the hill above it in an arc. Modern craftsmanship and very good craftsmanship, and there's no reason those two things shouldn't sit together.

What it gives you is silence. After a morning in the old city that's worth more than another building. Open seven till seven, no ticket, donation box inside the door, modest dress, leather left outside.

One practical thing. It's all marble and you're barefoot. At midday in April that floor is hot enough to make the climb to the upper shrines genuinely unpleasant, and there is no way round it. Go early or go at four.

Akbar's Palace, and Foy Sagar

Akbar built the palace by the main road in 1570 and it's the Rajputana Museum now. Sir Thomas Roe presented himself to Jahangir here in 1616 asking for East India Company trading rights, which is a decent claim to being the room where British India started, and there's a case for coming just to stand in it.

The collection is stone sculpture, Mughal armour, coins and inscriptions. It's a good museum and a dry one simultaneously. Sculpture and coins people will happily give it an hour. Everybody else is out in twenty minutes wondering why it was on the list, and that's a fair reaction rather than a failure of appreciation. Ten rupees, fifty for foreign visitors. Closed Mondays, which is the other row in the table below that ruins itineraries.

Foy Sagar was dug in 1892 as famine relief work, an English engineer called Foy paying local people through a bad year to build a reservoir. Six km out, flat, wide, hills behind it. Free. Half an hour, and worth it between November and February. In May it's a mudflat and I wouldn't spend the drive.

The reference bit: timings and entry fees

Everything above, condensed, for when you're actually planning the day rather than reading about it.

Fees move. State and ASI monuments revise them without announcing it, so treat those figures as roughly right rather than guaranteed.

Fitting it into one day

Start at the Dargah before seven and everything else falls into place behind it. That's the whole trick. There isn't a second one.

Walk up to Adhai Din from there, since you're already parked and it's five minutes on foot. Drive up to Taragarh for nine when it opens and it'll be empty, picking up Prithviraj Smarak on the way if you want it. Then come down for Soniji Ki Nasiyan around eleven and Akbar's Palace at noon, both of which are indoors, which matters more than it sounds like it does once the sun is up.

Lunch. Kachori and mirchi bada in the old city if you want what people here actually eat, or a hotel by the lake if you've just come off Taragarh in April and want air conditioning more than you want authenticity.

Afternoon is Nareli, then Foy Sagar if the lakes are full, then Ana Sagar and the gardens from about quarter past five. Finish at the Baradari for the last of the light.

Twelve stops, twelve hours, nobody running. Drop Mayo College, Prithviraj Smarak and Foy Sagar and it's a comfortable eight-hour day covering the nine that matter.

What about Ajmer for couples?

It's a pilgrimage city. It doesn't do romance the way Udaipur does, and pretending otherwise just sets people up to be disappointed.

You've got four good hours in it, though: the Baradari at sunset, the boat out to the island, the gardens in the evening when they're full, Foy Sagar when it isn't. If the trip is meant to be a romantic one then do Ajmer as the day of substance and sleep fifteen kilometres over the hill in Pushkar, where the ghats and the rooftops handle that side of it far better.

Getting here, and when

From Jaipur it's about 135 km on NH48. The map says two hours. It's two and a half, three if you leave after eight, because the last stretch in is slow and the old city is slower again. Trains do it in roughly an hour forty into Ajmer Junction and run through the day, which is often the better answer if you aren't carrying much. Drive if you want the day door to door or if you want to stop at Kishangarh on the way, which is worth an hour.

Delhi, take the Shatabdi. It leaves early and gets in around lunchtime, and the road alternative is nearly 400 km for no particular gain. From Udaipur or Jodhpur you're looking at five or six hours either way, which makes sense as a leg inside a longer loop and doesn't as a there-and-back.

Once you're here, autos are fine for two or three stops. For the full run take a car with a driver, because Taragarh and Nareli aren't auto journeys, parking in the old city is a real problem, and knowing where to drop people near the Dargah saves an hour on its own.

As for season. November to February. The lakes hold water, the fort is climbable, the day above runs at the pace it's written for. July to September is workable and the hills go green. April to June is a different trip entirely — four stops, all indoors or after five, with the middle of the day spent in a hotel. Anyone claiming they did all twelve on a June afternoon is describing a car park. Our page on the best time to visit Rajasthan goes month by month if you're still deciding.

Two dates to steer round. The Urs, which moves. And Pushkar Camel Fair in November, which empties every hotel room in Ajmer as a side effect of being fifteen kilometres away.

Pushkar, and how the two fit together

Thirty-five minutes over the hill. Nearly everyone pairs them and they're right to.

Do Ajmer in the day and Pushkar in the evening and the following morning. Ajmer's monuments keep daytime hours; Pushkar's ghats and rooftops and the Brahma temple are at their best at sunset and sunrise. Reverse it and you get the weaker version of both, which is what happens on most packaged itineraries.

Two days does the pair properly. One long day does it badly, and it's possible if you cut Ajmer to six stops, but the difference between the two is a single hotel night. Our heritage tours place both between Jaipur and Jodhpur, which is where they sit anyway.

A few things people ask before they come

How many days do you need in Ajmer?

One for the city. Two if you're adding Pushkar, and most people wish afterwards that they had.

What are the top 5 places to visit in Ajmer?

Ajmer Sharif Dargah, Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra, Soni Ji ki Nasiyan, Ana Sagar with the Baradari, and Nareli. Pilgrimage, architecture, surprise, water, quiet. Taragarh is sixth and weather-dependent.

Which places are closed on Mondays?

Only the museum. Everything else runs seven days.

Is it safe for solo and women travellers?

Yes, with ordinary care. The Dargah lanes are dense and pickpocketing happens there like it does at every crowded shrine in the country, so bags in front of you rather than behind. The city stays busy and lit late. Taragarh and Foy Sagar empty out after dark, so keep both in daylight.

What is Ajmer famous for?

The Dargah, before anything else. Then Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra as one of the earliest surviving mosques in India, and the gold Ayodhya at Soniji. And sohan halwa, which more people leave with than they intended to.