Royal Heritage Haveli

Four days of tiger-searching along Ranthambore’s unmade, bumpy tracks and on to Jaipur, past the usual mix of Indian street scenes: camels pulling giant carts, stalls overflowing with fruit and tended to by busy businessmen and women, people buzzing in and out of the streetside barber chair. India may be many things, but its head-turning majesty isn’t always restful. So now, for some luxury… 

Weaving in through rose-hued walls and fountain-speckled gardens of Royal Heritage Haveli, I pull up at the palatial entrance – bags promptly whisked away. I’m led to a handsome-looking heritage room, where light cascades in through ornate Indian windows. Cafetiere coffee arrives, biscuits follow, and I’m left to breathe a deep sigh of relief. I suspect I’ve been rumbled. Surely, they must know? But a quick glance down at my dusty clothes, convinces me otherwise. 

This is just the everyday welcome bestowed on guests of Royal Heritage Haveli. Mr Smith and I are given a choice of two suites. One with a secret outdoor shower tucked behind a wooden door, where water flows down over a slab of cantilevered slate (manager Suhas seems particularly pleased with this). But it’s the second option – overlooking the hotel’s elegant croquet lawn – that wins out for its mural-painted, midnight-blue ceiling, that unfurls like a blanket of stars. Bob Dylan’s refrain about dancing beneath diamond skies might well have been written here. It takes me back to the Royal Heritage Haveli of old, when this 18th-century character-packed building was known as the Khatipura Haveli. Surrounded by 3,000 acres of jungle-wrapped wilderness, it acted as a royal hunting ground for Jaipur’s reigning maharajas. Even our own monarchs, including Queen Mary, slung down their crowns here. And though the days of hunting in India have mercifully passed, the haveli remains, in essence, that sort of place: befitting of royals, but friendly to commoners, too. Even very dusty ones…

That said, spa time beckons, so I make my way across lawns turning amber at dusk, to a series of simple treatment rooms beside the pool, for a pre-dinner abhyangam. In case you’re not familiar with Sanskrit, the term refers to a full head-to-toe rub down, or traditional Indian massage. And at this point, I figure, I can’t go wrong. It does wonders. Especially when I emerge after sunset to see the hotel’s grounds garlanded with fairy lights, incense burning in one corner beside a Hindu statue, candles flickering on the roof terrace, lanterns hanging from a giant kigelia tree. It’s at night this hotel really comes to life. 

After a restorative G&T, Mr Smith and I make our way to dinner. A basset hound the size of a small family car lies sprawled across the terrace. ‘Excuse my very underweight dog,’ jokes Angelique, the owner of two slightly plump bassets, Muffin and Zoya, who waddle around the grounds. This 150-year-old building is Angelique’s ancestral home, which she restored with her husband, Pradip Singh. The pair live elsewhere in Jaipur, but the two dogs remain, dutifully keeping guard. The Kigelia Court restaurant is named after the giant flower-filled tree that casts its branches across the terrace. On warm Indian evenings, such as this, it’s particularly atmospheric. Mr Smith and I sit gazing across the light-strung gardens as the muezzin’s call to prayer drifts across the night. You could easily get carried away with the romance of it all. But the food arrives, so we shake it off and get stuck in. Traditional Indian folk musicians play in one corner, as a parade of rogan josh, roti and rice emerges (there’s an international menu if you’re craving non-Indian food). It strikes me that Royal Heritage Haveli is a thoughtful sort of place. Squinting over the menu, a torch appears; mosquito spray, while sitting at the bar after dark; armbands, toys and floats for a tantrum-verging toddler, reticent about jumping in the pool. It’s the little things that count.

Rested and restored, next morning we plunge into Jaipur. Capital of Rajasthan, Jaipur is known as ‘the Pink City’ for the fuchsia hue of its Old City, painted in honour of Prince Albert’s arrival in 1876. Today, these rose-tinted walls are scrawled with murals and overhung with bursts of bougainvillea, lending the city a bright, almost-tropical feel. I like it immediately. We stop by the impressive Hawa Mahal – or ‘Palace of the Winds’ – whose multi-tiered honeycomb structure was crafted to include a thousand intricate jharokha windows, so that Jaipur’s royal woman could watch passers by without themselves being seen. The city’s headline sights are the impressive City Palace and, outside of town, the golden-hued Amber Fort. We visit both, but it’s Jaipur’s tangled bazaars that seduce: packed with fruit sellers throwing bananas to greedy macques and friendly faces saying namaste. Come evening, we spruce up and set off for the smart Palladio bar – a stylish ode to Jaipur’s cosmopolitan aire – where canopied Indian tables and chairs spread out over light-bathed lawns. But Royal Heritage Haveli still has my heart, for giving me a royal welcome, even when I was a commoner. Rags and all.