The places, people and stays worth travelling for. Written by the people who go and check.
Want it? In the weaving town of Maheshwar, the 18th-century queen Ahilyabai Holkar built temples and ghats across India and ruled from a fort above the Narmada. Her descendants still live in it — and since 2000 have let a handful of guests stay too.
Want it? The palace the hotel calls Varanasi's second oldest has stood above the Ganges at Darbhanga Ghat since 1812. The right way in is by boat; then sitar with sunrise, Kathak after dark, and a front-row seat at the aarti.
Deal available Delhi, Agra and Jaipur make up the classic first trip to North India, too often seen from three interchangeable hotel lobbies. There is another way: a bed and breakfast, a homestay and a family haveli, one car and driver, and parathas before the forts.
Want it? At SUJÁN Sher Bagh, on the edge of Ranthambhore, the campaign tent is not a costume but a family inheritance, with a history in Ranthambhore's conservation going back some five decades.
Want it? Between Jodhpur and Udaipur, SUJÁN JAWAI has spent more than a decade proving that wild leopards, Rabari herdsmen and ten very good tented suites can share the same granite hills.
Deal available Forty minutes beyond Jaisalmer, SUJÁN The Serai pitches twenty-one tents on a hundred private acres of desert scrub and lets the Thar itself do the entertaining.
Want it? In Churu, on the edge of the Thar, a 1920s merchant's guesthouse that ended up entertaining a Maharaja is now Shekhawati's most charming place to sleep.
Want it? In sleepy Aldona, a 150-year-old Portuguese villa is now an art-first boutique hotel where the paintings, the plates and even the furniture are for sale.
Want it? A century-old Portuguese home on the banks of the Zuari with six rooms, five dogs and one copper bathtub. Goa with the volume turned right down.
Want it? Sula's heritage resort in Nashik sits, by its own telling, on the site of the company's first winery, with vines, Deccan hills and Gangapur Lake all around.
Want it? Ekaa Agra is a 13-room boutique hotel that treats Agra as the destination, not the photo stop. Colour-soaked rooms, home recipes, real neighbourhood.
Want it? A 14th-century Rajput fort near Ranthambhore, restored over more than a decade into 48 suites, a vast spa and Rajasthan's plushest tiger base.
Deal available Bruce Chatwin wrote The Songlines at this lakeside garh near Jodhpur, the family will tell you. The family, here since 1622, still runs the kitchen, the stables and the welcome.
Want it? A colonial home in Old Shimla where six galaxy named rooms, a glazed verandah and clear night skies do all the talking.
Want it? Their Dubki Pool is the oldest rooftop pool in Udaipur, by the house's own telling, and the terrace at dusk backs the boast. Sixty four rooms above Hanuman Ghat.
Deal available Casa Jaali's own monsoon offer, open to everyone and booked direct with the hotel. We think it is the best beach deal in Goa right now.
Deal available One family, three wildernesses. Why the SUJÁN camps are what Indian safari was always meant to be.
Want it? No gates, no jeep queues, no luck required. The granite hills where leopards live in the open.
Deal available Thirteen centuries of desert song, a fire in the dunes, and the last light of Jaisalmer.
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