28 Kothi

Five rooms, each named after a gemstone. That is the whole hotel, and it is exactly the point. 28 Kothi was conceptualised by the late Munnu Kasliwal, the jewellery designer the hotel's own pages call one of Jaipur's acclaimed, and the guesthouse he left behind treats space the way his family treats stones: small, considered, cut with precision. His son Siddharth, a ninth-generation jeweller of Gem Palace, now runs it with hotelier Abhishek Honawar of Honar Group, and the property's own pages note it was named a winner of the Condé Nast Traveller Readers' Choice Awards 2025.

A kothi built as an oasis

The two-storeyed house sits in Civil Lines, a quiet, central Jaipur neighbourhood well away from the old city crush. It was built by French architect Georges Floret as a retreat for travelling creatives, and Jaipur-based Lebanese designer Nur Kaoukji of Ecru shaped the interiors: hand-painted murals, latticed windows that throw shifting shadows through the day, and furniture made to order by local artisans. There are just two master suites, two doubles and one single. Sapphire, the largest at 600 sq ft, comes with its own private terrace; Moon Stone stretches to 500 sq ft; little Peridot, a 200 sq ft single perched on the top floor, opens onto the communal terrace.

Where restraint becomes a form of luxury.

That is Harper's Bazaar's line, quoted by the hotel on its own homepage from a piece marking the house completing a decade, and it captures the place nicely. In our view this is the rare guesthouse where less genuinely reads as luxury rather than economy.

Vegetarian, farm-fresh, all day

Café Kothi, the in-house restaurant, keeps to a vegetarian farm-to-table menu served from the patio, the terrace or candle-lit tables on the lawn. Daily breakfast is included, and yoga sessions, a spa and airport transfers are on the services list. The entire kothi can be taken over by groups of up to 12 with a minimum three-day booking, which strikes us as the best way to use a house this personal. Check-in is at 3pm, check-out at 11am.