Fateh Vilas

Udaipur's palace hotels tend to make you choose between spectacle and space. Fateh Vilas, the newest of the Fateh Collection's properties, at Sisarma on Udaipur's Bujara Road, is built around the second: 76 rooms and suites where even the entry category runs to 390 sq ft with its own sit-out, and where 32 of the keys come with a private plunge pool facing the Aravalli hills.

A resort that leans into the pool

The plunge pool is the house speciality here. Sixteen Plunge Pool Suites at 400 sq ft, and another sixteen Family Plunge Pool Suites at 600 sq ft, put a private pool on your own terrace rather than making you share the main one. Families are properly catered for too, with 570 sq ft Family Suites sleeping four, and the 700 sq ft Fateh Vilas Suite at the top of the tree with a king bed and a bathtub. On paper that is a generous spread of rooms, though we should say plainly that we have not stayed here yet.

Surrounded by jungle, with views towards Lake Pichola and the Aravalli hills

Next door to a sister house, five kilometres from town

Fateh Vilas sits directly beside Fateh Garh, its sister property in the collection, about 5 km from Udaipur's city centre and 30 km from the airport. That buys quiet greenery without exile: the hotel runs a private boat cruise on Lake Pichola and a guided heritage walk through the old city's step wells and havelis. On site there is a multi-cuisine restaurant, a spa, a swimming pool, and the owning family's vintage car museum, which direct-booking guests visit free. The scale cuts both ways, mind: with what the hotel counts as roughly 11,000 sq ft of banqueting space, including a pillar-less two-storey hall, this is also a serious wedding venue, so check dates if you want the place to yourselves. For couples and families who want a heritage resort with space to spread out and a pool of their own, it is an easy case to make.