Hotel Kanha Shyam by Sarah Anderson

The only reasonable but rather corporate-feeling hotel in Allahabad, the Kanha Shyam with 85 rooms, is somewhat scruffy, but to compensate the staff are very friendly. The marble in the lobby is from Italy and Nepal but away from the communal areas the smallish rooms have hard beds and are dimly lit with shabby furnishings.

The Patio coffee shop on the ground floor is open 24 hours for snacks and on the top floor the Baradari serves good Lucknowi and Awadhi food. The Court View bar also on the top floor resembles an underground dive with extremely heavy leather armchairs. Room service was ultra-efficient and there are prints by the Russian mystic Nicholas Roerich (whose paintings are in the museum), dotted around the corridors.

Allahabad which is off the mainstream tourist beat has much to recommend it: the Mughal tombs at Khusrau Bagh with extraordinary frescoes, the Anand Bhawan (the Nehru family home), a museum filled with exceptional sculpture and paintings and perhaps most importantly it is one the holiest of Hindu cities where the sacred rivers of the Jamuna and Ganga meet and where the Kumbh Mela takes place.