The shoulder weeks nobody books, and what they buy you
There are about three weeks either side of the high season that behave like high season and are priced like nothing much.
Late September into early October in the north: the monsoon has gone, everything is still green rather than dust-coloured, and the season has not started. Late March: warm, getting warmer, and almost empty at the forts.
What those weeks buy is not only money. It is the thing money cannot buy later — a guide who has time, a table at the restaurant everyone writes about, a fort in the morning with fifty people in it rather than fifteen hundred, and a hotel that is pleased to see you rather than processing you.
The trade is real. Late March is hot by afternoon in Rajasthan, and early October can still throw a wet day in the south. Both are manageable by moving the day around rather than by not going.
We book more of our own family travel in those weeks than in December, which is probably the most honest thing we can say about them.
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