Every place here is one we would stay in ourselves — 66 of them. Narrow it by where you are going, or by the kind of place you want.
Rocky peninsula. Patnem Beach. Dolphins at sunrise. Casa Jaali is where you actually want to be in Goa. Authentic Goan architecture, locally crafted rooms, 35 meters from the beach. The real thing.
save over 30% Twenty-one tents on the golden edge of the Thar: private plunge pools, Manganiyar bards by firelight, and dunes running to the horizon. Jaisalmer's living fortress is up the road.
By enquiry A restored 18th-century sandstone kothi on Guleria Ghat — no road to the door, you arrive by boat
By enquiry A mansion-style stay in Pondicherry's French Quarter where whitewashed arches and high ceilings meet the salt-air bustle of the Tamil coast just outside the door.
By enquiry Ten tented suites among billion-year-old granite, where leopards live openly alongside Rabari herdsmen. Twice-daily drives, Marwari horses, and candlelit brass baths under the stars.
By enquiry Twelve campaign-style tents on the edge of Ranthambhore: brass bathtubs, a Tatler-listed jungle spa, campfire cooking, and India's most celebrated tigers a game drive away.
By enquiry Sixty four rooms above Hanuman Ghat and the oldest rooftop pool in Udaipur, by the house's own telling. Dusk up there outshines the palace bars.
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.
By enquiry A 14th-century walled fort near Ranthambhore, restored over more than a decade into 48 contemporary Rajasthani suites, with two palaces, two temples and a 30,000 square foot spa inside the ramparts.
By enquiry A cream-and-terracotta villa on the site of Sula's first winery, by the house's own telling, with rooms named after the world's wine regions and views running over the vines towards Gangapur Lake.
By enquiry A century-old Shekhawati haveli in Churu, restored into a heritage hotel. Aquamarine stucco, carved balconies and muralled rooms, with the painted town and the desert on the doorstep.
By enquiry In Aldona, inland North Goa, The Project Café has turned a 150-year-old Portuguese villa into an art-first boutique hotel with a pool, gallery, art bar and shop. Rooms are named after Goan places, and and, the hotel says outright, what catches your eye can be bought and taken home.
By enquiry A Portuguese house of around 1919 at Siridao bridge in Goa Velha, lovingly restored from 2014 by local artisans and reborn as a six-room boutique hotel. Expect a courtyard pool between red arcaded wings, a waterfront cafe with a pastry chef they say is Le Cordon Bleu certified, five resident dogs and the sort of quiet that North Goa's beach belt forgot.
By enquiry A 13-room boutique hotel in Agra's Taj Nagri, built by three friends with deep roots in the city. Rooms borrow from the Taj's arches and inlay work, the kitchen serves family recipes from within 50 km, and the tours go where day-trippers never do.
New Lake Pichola on your doorstep, the City Palace next door, and a rooftop where the tables look straight across the water to the Lake Palace at sunset. Jagat Niwas is a 27-room heritage haveli in the old city of Udaipur: Mewari arches, a mirror-ceilinged lake-view dining room, a rooftop plunge pool and a lakefront spa. A boutique address in the heart of the City of Lakes.
By enquiry A red-sandstone palace on the edge of the Thar, raised by the Maharaja of Bikaner in 1904 and famous, even then, for guests who never quite wanted to leave. Domes and cupolas, deep-carved friezes, filigree stonework and latticed screens, set in formal lawns. The Laxmi Niwas Palace is the royal house of Bikaner, now a heritage hotel.
By enquiry High above the ghats of the sacred Narmada, in the weaving town of Maheshwar, stands the 18th-century fort-palace of Ahilyabai Holkar — still in the family, and now opening its courtyards to a handful of guests. Nineteen rooms across six old buildings, three walled courtyards, a garden pool, and a daily table grown in the fort's own beds. One of central India's great stays.
By enquiry Down a lane in the old walled city, behind high gates, the Samode family's Jaipur townhouse hides a run of painted courtyards, frescoed halls, and a lotus-fountain garden you dine around by candlelight. Around 225 years old and still family-run — one of the loveliest heritage stays in the Pink City.
By enquiry On the banks of the Poovar River at the far south of Kerala — where river, beach and backwater meet — Isola di Cocco is a coconut-grove retreat of Kerala-style villas, a private beach, and a proper Ayurvedic centre on site. Its name means the Island of Coconuts. Days go slowly here: the pool, the sand, or the long calm of an Ayurveda treatment.
By enquiry On a headland at the very top of Goa, where the Arabian Sea meets the Terekhol River, a small 17th-century fort keeps a whitewashed chapel and a handful of rooms above the water. Cross on the little ferry, climb to the ramparts, and Goa empties out below you. Fort Tiracol is the quiet, old-Portuguese Goa most people never find.
By enquiry A 19th-century thikana palace in the middle of Jaipur, still run by the Diggi family who built it — some eighteen acres of courtyards, arched gateways and lawns behind the city walls. Home of the Jaipur Literature Festival since 2006, and a genuinely warm, unstuffy heritage stay the rest of the year.
By enquiry Above the Indus near Leh, the Namgyal family's home of two centuries takes guests — a monk on the top floor, the royal museum, and three villas in the apricot orchard.
By enquiry Mharo khet is Marwari for 'my farm'. On 40 acres outside Jodhpur: ten raga-named cottages, a nine-course dinner in the guava orchard, and a spot on TIME's World's Greatest Places list.
By enquiry An hour from the Taj: a family seat traced to 1472, fourteen rooms in regrown forest, and slow boats past wild gharials on a river that bandit legend and an ancient curse kept blissfully undisturbed.
By enquiry A sanctuary of stone and wood at five thousand feet in Bhowali, heart of the Kumaon Lake District, with Kumaoni cooking from its own herb garden and treks from the door.
By enquiry A seven-room Indo-Portuguese villa hidden in Loutolim's forested heart, named for Goa's unhurried way of being — slow days of river fishing, nature walks and birdsong.
By enquiry A 130-year-old colonial cottage atop Moti Tiba's deodar-clad heights, a kilometre from Dalhousie's Gandhi Chowk, with bay-windowed rooms and dining at Cedar.
By enquiry Heritage suites named for Viceroys on a 161-year-old tea garden estate, its 16 acres of plantation rolling towards the Dhauladhar range above Dharamshala.
By enquiry A Goan garden retreat in the forested lanes of Saligao, its nine village-named rooms, pool and outdoor showers 4–5 km from North Goa's beaches.
By enquiry Folk-art villas — Gond, Dhokra and Bagh print — at the edge of Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, where safaris, Baiga kitchens and bush dinners follow the jungle's rhythm.
New A 200-year-old palace on Darbhanga Ghat — the second-oldest in Varanasi, reached the old way, by boat
By enquiry A lantern-lit heritage kothi near the bank of the Ganga — carved balconies, stained-glass courtyards, a rooftop pool above the river and the Triveni Sangam just up the road.
By enquiry A small bed-and-breakfast base in Delhi — Deluxe and Superior rooms with breakfast included.
By enquiry A conservation-minded lodge from Bhopal's Jehan Numa family, in teak country near Satpura Tiger Reserve — the park where safaris go on foot, by canoe and by cycle as much as by jeep. Sleep in cottages set among nallah, forest or hill, or in tents ringed round a perennial waterhole that draws wildlife to the doorstep. The name comes from the reni berry trees here, a favourite of sloth bears.
By enquiry On Dayapur Island opposite Sundarban National Park, this camp has been running cruise safaris into the mangrove waterways since 2004 — you arrive by boat from Gadkhali along the Pitchkhali River. The 21 rooms, each hand-painted by a local artist and kept free of televisions, all have private balconies. Evenings bring a sundowner at the Mangrove bar and, some nights, a Bonobibi Jatra — the local play of the forest goddess.
By enquiry The Mela Kothi went up in the late 1860s as the office for a zamindar family's twice-yearly cattle fair; the same family restored it from 1999 as a safari lodge in 33 acres of planted forest. Fourteen rooms and cottages sit among the trees. Boats go out on the National Chambal Sanctuary for gharials and Gangetic dolphins, and the Taj Mahal is about an hour's drive.
By enquiry Founded in 1978, a few years after Ladakh first opened to travellers, and now stewarded by Ladakhis, this slow-travel base sits in Ayu village in the Indus Valley, built in traditional stone-and-mud style. Stay in a mud hut, a chalet or the duplex suite. Televisions have been removed from every room; a shared set waits in the Sarai Hall, which tells you what the place is for.
By enquiry An eco-minded boutique lodge on 6.5 acres at the periphery of Sariska Tiger Reserve, ringed by the Aravalli range. Nineteen simply designed cottages, finished in locally sourced materials, sit in five clusters opening onto lawns; the first-floor Maharani Suite looks out to Thanagazi Fort. Safaris go after Sariska's tigers, and the buffer zone stays open year-round except Wednesdays.
By enquiry A contemporary hotel on Old Leh Road, built the old Ladakhi way: thick, buttressed walls of compressed earth blocks made on site. Leh's main market is 350 metres away, Leh Palace just over a kilometre. Juniper, the ground-floor restaurant, works Ladakhi and Tibetan flavours through its menus, and the bathroom floors are heated — which, in a Leh winter, is no small thing.
By enquiry Kahani hides in twenty acres of hillside garden directly behind the sandy bay of Paradise Beach, on the Gokarna peninsula. There are just eight rooms and suites, all looking out at the Arabian Sea, with coastal cooking and plenty to do on and off the estate. The gardens are full of butterflies.
By enquiry A ten-room retreat on seven acres of rainforest in the Sholayar forest, its balconies looking straight onto the Athirappilly falls. A lone treehouse sits up in the canopy, waterfall beyond the treetops. There is an infinity pool and Ayurveda, and the quieter diversions are the good ones: tribal bamboo cooking, firefly watching after dark.
By enquiry Niraamaya's wellness retreat sits on a cliff above the Athirappilly falls, along the banks of the Chalakudy River. Rooms, cottages and private-pool villas, many facing the water, with the group's Ayurveda-led spa at the centre of things. Café Samsara handles the all-day dining; the Essence lounge bar keeps the waterfall view. Unusually for a retreat of this sort, it takes pets.
By enquiry A small boutique resort between the Kannan Devan and Bison Valley hills, in Munnar's high ranges, with fourteen suites and two pool villas spread across the Muttukadu and Kumbappara hills. Every suite looks over the valley; some add Victorian jacuzzis, plunge pools or copper tubs. The outdoor pool is solar-heated mountain spring water, and the tea lounge is called 300 BC.
By enquiry A 150-acre stretch of Wayanad rainforest the founders came across in 1993, six coffee-workers' row houses standing on it; today there are 36 villas and cottages, plus tree houses up in the canopy, beside a forest stream crossed by a swaying rope bridge. No TVs, no air-conditioning, patchy signal, quite deliberately. Kerala Ayurveda at the spa; the Malabar whistling thrush does the wake-up call.
By enquiry A resort set within a working tea and cardamom plantation at Vandanmedu, in the hills near Thekkady. The stays are the draw: wooden tree houses on stilts with wrap-around balconies over the plantation, plunge-pool villas, planters' villas, even a cave room. Kolumban, the restaurant, cooks old Kerala recipes alongside the multi-cuisine spread, and days go on plantation walks, jeep safaris and a look around the cardamom factory.
By enquiry A resort in a coconut grove in the open countryside outside Pollachi, on the rural fringe of Coimbatore district. Rooms climb from compact executive rooms to pond-view suites and villas with plunge or private pools, with an infinity pool and The Palm restaurant at the centre. The excursions stay local, and are better for it: bullock-cart rides, handloom village visits, palm-jaggery tours.
By enquiry Anantya sits on the banks of Chittar Lake inside the Vaikundam Estate, a working rubber plantation in Kanyakumari district run by one family since 1957. Villas and cottages face the lake, some with private pools or outdoor jacuzzis; days go on plantation tours, fishing from the banks, and drives to watch the sun set at the tip of India.
By enquiry The grand old name of the Kumarakom backwaters: a 25-acre heritage resort on the banks of Vembanad Lake, four times named India's Leading Resort at the World Travel Awards. Stays run from heritage villas with private pools to meandering-pool villas and the resort's own houseboats. Ayurmana, the Ayurveda spa, is taken seriously here; the traditional Kerala teashop is a nice touch among the restaurants.
By enquiry A white Art Deco house from 1936 on Lucknow's Mall Avenue, refurbished in 2016 and set in its own lawns. There are 41 rooms and suites, from the compact Awadh Room to the four-poster Heritage and Imperial Suites, most of which open onto the central courtyard the hotel calls the Sehen. Downstairs, Azrak cooks Awadhi food; there is also a pool, a spa and a rooftop lounge.
By enquiry A four-room bed and breakfast in a house in Safdarjung Enclave, styled, its owner Caroline says, on her grandmother's Anglo-Indian home in Calcutta. The rooms, Iris, Rose, Jasmine and Lily, take their names from the flower-named daughters and aunts of Anglo-Indian families; each is different, with its own bathroom and a balcony or terrace. The kitchen cooks home-style Anglo-Indian, Bengali and Delhi dishes, and the house is fully staffed through the day.
By enquiry Two bed-and-breakfast houses in Defence Colony, an upmarket, tree-lined corner of South Delhi; the doors first opened in 2008. Rooms are Standard Rooms, each with an air purifier, opening onto shared lounges hung with original art. The kitchen makes its own jams, marmalade and multigrain bread, the banana bread is the house speciality guests ask for most, and in good weather breakfast and dinner move up to the rooftop.
By enquiry Castle Bijaipur was built in the early 16th century by Rao Vijay Singh, a descendant of Shakti Singh, younger brother of Maharana Pratap, and was converted into a hotel in 1991 by the ruling family — who still live in it. It sits at 600 metres in the Vindhyanchal Hills near Chittorgarh, surrounded by forests of Flame of the Forest and Jacaranda.
By enquiry Dera Rawatsar is a family-run boutique hotel in Jaipur's Bani Park, built in 1950 and run by the House of Rawatsar, who trace their ancestry to the Kandhlot Rathore clan of Rajputs. It has 16 rooms across three categories, a garden, an outdoor pool and an in-house restaurant serving home-style Indian food.
By enquiry Dhora Desert Resort & Spa is a 45-acre tented camp at Gogadevgarh, Village Shekhala in Jodhpur district, about 100 km from Jodhpur. Its 15 luxury tented suites face a pond framed by sand dunes, and the resort is owned and run by a young couple who live on site, opening each year from October to March.
By enquiry A hand-built, artisan-decorated homestay in Tajganj, about 500 metres from the Taj Mahal near the East Gate Shilpgram parking. The multilingual hosts — fluent in French, German, English and Hindi — draw on over 30 years as professional tourist escorts.
By enquiry Dhariyawad was founded in the middle of the 16th century by Prince Sahasmal, second son of Maharana Pratap of Mewar, and the family fort has been converted into a heritage hotel. It sits at the confluence of the Jakham and Karmoi rivers in southern Rajasthan, ringed by the subtropical forests of the Aravalli Hills.
By enquiry Haveli Hauz Khas is a five-room bed and breakfast in a heritage mansion in Hauz Khas Enclave, South Delhi, run by hosts Neelu and Teji, heritage enthusiasts who have written books on Indian history, architecture and travel. Each air-conditioned room follows an Indian heritage theme — Ajanta, Banni, Hampi, Kama and Neem — and breakfast is fresh and home-cooked.
By enquiry Jas Vilas is a 14-room hotel in Jaipur's Bani Park, developed by Mahendra and Rajyashree Singh from their ancestral family home. Fresh Indian meals are cooked to order and taken in the dining room or by the mural-walled swimming pool.
By enquiry Kesar Bagh Palace is a palace-style resort at Village Barada on the edge of Chittorgarh, close to the Udaipur-Bhilwara highway, and the hotel says it is the only five-star property in town. Five room categories, the Kesari multi-cuisine restaurant, an outdoor pool and the Urban Nirvana Spa sit within grounds built in the Rajput manner.
By enquiry Niravi is a leafy boutique hotel in the historic Peelwa Gardens off Moti Doongri Road, redesigned by three Jaipur sisters who grew up in the original bungalow. Two wings — the restored Bungalow and a contemporary Estate with Tangier-inflected arches — share tropical gardens, a pool courtyard, a smaller gazebo lounge pool and an intimate spa.
By enquiry Padmaa is a restored 18th-century haveli in the heart of Jaipur's walled city, run by the family that has held it for seven generations and named after their grandmother, Shrimati Padmaa Devi Shah. It is an all-suite boutique hotel with 15 uniquely styled suites, a courtyard restaurant, two bars, and a rooftop pool and spa overlooking the Pink City.
By enquiry Part of the palace Sir Ajit Singh Ji of Jodhpur commissioned as his residence, begun in 1927 under British architect Sir Henry Lanchester and now run as a heritage hotel by his descendants. 'Ranbanka' — master of battles — was the battle-honour of Jodhpur's Rathore clan.
By enquiry A restored 17th-century royal retreat at the foot of Elephant Hill, sitting roughly halfway between Jodhpur and Udaipur. Opened as a boutique hotel in 1996 by Rani Usha Devi and the late Maharaj Swaroop Singh, it has 32 rooms set around courtyards bright with flowers.
By enquiry Soulacia is a luxury eco-resort at Village Khatia beside Kanha National Park, founded in 2009 on a barren plot that held just four solitary trees and since grown into its own small ecosystem. It sits a two-minute drive from the Khatia entry gate on the Kisli side of the park, with in-house naturalists, solar power and a farm-to-table kitchen.
By enquiry Surya Haveli is a six-room boutique haveli on the main square of Amer, the old Rajput capital just outside Jaipur, directly below the walls of 16th-century Amber Fort. The family dates the building to some 300 years ago; after a three-year restoration it opened in February 2021, with interiors by designer Adil Ahmad and three dining venues including a rooftop restaurant facing the fort.
By enquiry Talabgaon Castle is a restored Rajput fort in Dausa district, still owned by the Kupawat Rathore family who have held the estate for over 200 years. It offers 52 rooms and suites, its own organic farms feeding a farm-to-table kitchen, and sits roughly midway between Jaipur and the Ranthambore tiger reserve.
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