The planner

Braj, in one file.

Nineteen printable pages that work at 5 am in a lane with no signal — temple timings, itineraries, verified festival dates, and the practical truth. Everything the free guide knows, arranged to carry.

Braj runs on a schedule nobody tells you about. Temples shut at midday and reopen at dusk. The best hour of the day is 4:30 in the morning. Festival dates move every year against the Western calendar. Get those three right and the region opens; get them wrong and you spend your trip standing outside locked doors.

This is the file that gets them right — and it works where your phone doesn't. Banke Bihari, Radha Raman and Krishna Janmabhoomi all restrict or prohibit phones inside. A printed page is the only guide you can actually carry in there.

The guide stays free. Every fact in the planner is already on this site, with no email wall, and always will be. You're buying the arrangement — printable, offline, in your hand — not access. Read three pages free and decide.

PDF · A4 · 19 pages · Edition 2026–27 — finished and in final checks

What's inside

Ten sections, nothing padded.

Written to be used on a trip, not read on a sofa. The timings table alone is the reason most people print it.

01 The seven things that decide your trip
The midday shutdown, the 4:30 am hour, and five more that visitors learn too late.
02 Itineraries that respect the clock
One, two, three and five days — hour by hour, built around the shutdown rather than against it.
03 Temple timings, all twenty-two
Summer and winter hours in one printable table. The page people actually carry.
04 Festival dates 2026–27
Verified, with the booking windows and this cycle’s two calendar oddities.
05 Getting there and around
Distances, journey times, and what a car or rickshaw should actually cost.
06 Being a good guest
Dress, shoes, darshan manners, photography, prasad and donations.
07 Money, safety, staying well
The soft scams, crowd rules that matter, monkeys, and emergency numbers.
08 Packing checklist
By season, with tick-boxes — including what to leave at home.
09 The words you’ll hear
Darshan, aarti, prasad, parikrama — eight words that change what you see.
10 Your trip sheet
Fill in and print: bookings, driver, insurance, reunion point. Works when a phone dies.

Honestly

Who it's not for.

If you're travelling with a guide who has done this a hundred times, you don't need it. If you're happy reading the site on your phone and never printing anything, you don't need it either — it's all free over here, and that isn't a sales tactic.

It earns its keep for people arriving mostly self-guided, especially for a festival, who want the schedule settled before they land and something in their pocket when the phone goes in a locker.

Questions

Asked often.

Isn’t all of this free on the site already?
Yes — and it stays that way. Every fact in the planner comes from the free guide, which has no email wall and never will. What you are buying is the arrangement: one printable file that works at 5 am in a lane with no signal, when your phone is in a temple locker. If you would rather read it free on the site, please do.
What exactly is in it?
19 pages: the seven things that decide your trip, hour-by-hour itineraries for one, two, three and five days, a printable timings table for all 22 temples in summer and winter, verified festival dates for 2026–27, distances and what transport should cost, temple etiquette, the soft scams, emergency numbers, a season-by-season packing checklist with tick-boxes, the vocabulary you'll hear, and a fill-in trip sheet for your bookings.
What format is it?
A PDF, A4, designed for printing as well as reading on a phone. No app, no account, no expiry. Pages 4–7 are the ones worth printing and carrying.
Will it go out of date?
The festival dates are specific to the 2026–27 cycle; the timings, etiquette, and logistics change slowly. When the next edition is ready, buyers of this one get it at no charge — write in and it will be sent.
Who wrote it?
Amit Solanki — a local, based in Agra at the doorstep of Braj. The same person who writes the free guide and answers the advisory email. There are no commissions in it, from anyone, and no hotel or operator paid to be mentioned.

Letters from Braj

One honest email, now and then.

Festival dates as they're announced, new guides, and things worth knowing before you travel. No marketing, no selling your address, easy to leave.

Used only to send these letters. See the privacy note.