Should I stay in Jodhpur old city or outside it?

Stay in the old city under Mehrangarh if this is a two-night stop and you want the fort, the market and the blue lanes on foot. Choose Circuit House Road for a pool and a garden with the fort still ten minutes away. The desert garhs and forts are an hour or more out and work as a night in their own right, not as a base for seeing the city.

How long does Mehrangarh Fort take?

Allow three hours. The audio tour runs about ninety minutes across the palace apartments and museum, and most people spend as long again on the ramparts looking over the blue city. Going at opening time avoids both the coach groups and the heat.

Is Jodhpur worth a stop between Udaipur and Jaisalmer?

Yes, and it is the natural break: roughly five hours from Udaipur and five and a half on to Jaisalmer, so it splits a long drive into two manageable ones. Two nights gives you the fort, Jaswant Thada and the market with an evening to spare.

Indiaesque

Experience India

India · 14 hand-picked stays

Boutique hotels
in Jodhpur

Jodhpur splits neatly in two: the blue city packed under Mehrangarh Fort, and the desert country beyond it. Our 14 stays here fall on either side of that line, and they make for very different trips.

Under the fort, in the old city, the havelis look up at Mehrangarh's walls and you walk to the clock tower market. Pal Haveli has 21 rooms in a 200-year-old Thakur family house below the fort. Haveli Inn Pal belongs to the same family holding, granted with the fiefdom of Pal in 1843 and a private home until recently. RAAS Jodhpur is the modern one of the group, 40 rooms around an 18th-century courtyard facing the fort.

Circuit House Road and the colonial quarter, ten minutes out, holds the larger red sandstone residences. Ajit Bhawan was built in 1927 for Maharaj Sir Ajit Singh of Marwar-Jodhpur. Ranbanka Palace is a 1920s palace on the same road. Karni Bhawan is a colonial bungalow in the middle of the city. Space, gardens and pools, at the cost of the fort on your doorstep.

The forts and garhs outside town are the reason to give Jodhpur an extra night. Rohet Garh has been one family's for four centuries, beside its lake. Chandelao Garh has been held by the Rathores since 1744. Fort Chanwa is an 1894 fortified haveli with 65 rooms at Luni, and Fort Khejarla a 1611 fort on a granite hillock, further out again.

Into the Thar proper, Mihir Garh holds nine suites of over 1,700 sq ft on a dune, and Dhora has 15 tented suites around a desert pond about 100 km from the city.

Jodhpur airport is 5 km from the centre, unusually close. Udaipur is roughly five hours by road, Jaisalmer about five and a half.

Planning the rest of the trip? Read our Jodhpur travel guide.

Where they are

7 of the 14 stays in Jodhpur; the rest are not pinned yet. Tap a pin for the stay.

Jodhpur · Heritage hotel

Rohet Garh

A classified heritage hotel at Rohet near Jodhpur, held by the same family since 1622 and receiving guests since 1990. Frescoed rooms, a courtyard pool, a family kitchen with its own cookbook, and a Marwari stable the family calls among the country's finest.