India Round-up by Justine Hardy
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Trident Gurgaon
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It's lost its charm I'm told. Tour operators say the infrastructure sucks, service is a joke and top end hotel prices are seriously out of whack with the rest of the country.
Perhaps this is why the good minister's assistant's assistant is sitting in front of me - head in hands - wondering why India only has some five million tourists a year while Dubai manages to pull in 14 million. Perhaps the good minister's assistant's assistant has failed to notice that we're part way through a seven hour power cut with the mercury above his desk hitting 40ºC.
In my book, all the above makes it about the best time to come to India. Hoteliers and tour companies are so happy to see anyone, they roll out the red carpet and scatter rose petals at your feet. There are also a couple of new breeds of hotel coming up in India. The first caters to the really rich, creating a designer mirage of the Merchant-Ivory meets yogi-Vogue variety. The other is a collection of almost private homes that offer a mixture of family life and desi cooking - about as far away from the hairdryer and phone-by-the-loo culture as you can get. With the sad continuing political state of attrition between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, and the overkill in Himachal Pradesh, trekking routes are now opening up in the glorious areas of Garhwal and Kumaon in Uttar Pradesh and the very newly created Uttaranachal. In spite of the wailing and gnashing of teeth, there is much going on.
Ananda-in-the-Himalayas: www.anandaspa.com is set in the foothills above Rishikesh, aka Spirituality Central-on-Ganges. It is a retreat resort that has grown out of three men's vision to create a holistic spa. Ananda means tranquil and the eponym has triumphed. It is organic in every sense - from the garden rose petals that are part of the facials to the fact that the centrepiece spa area was built without disturbing the natural roll of the hills.
Ananda's 'mission' is to work with guests and find out what they want to achieve from their stay, whether a new source of spiritual inspiration or just a neater bum. Whatever you go for, it's hard to beat moments such as evening meditation on a lawn, looking to the mountains for animist inspiration while monkeys leap and snack all around you on unfortunate low-flying bugs. My only reservation was the slightly boxy NCP-esque architecture of the main guest block, but I was assured this was for reasons of earthquake safety and to disturb the ground as little as possible.
Devigarh in Rajastan (www.deviresorts.com) is a style statement that has set a new precedent in palace restoration. The exterior has been returned to its perfect 18th century state while the interiors have a rinsed modernity to them that makes them the most soft and elegant spaces to live in. As it's only a 45 minute drive from the tourist honeytrap of Udaipur, Devigarh is rapidly pulling the top end crowd away from the traditional stopovers of the palaces in Udaipur.
The Cottage, Joelikot: The Cottage at Joelikot - easily reached on an overnight train from Delhi - is simply a very lovely hill home that has been opened to guests by its owner Bhuvan Kumari. The food is very definitely home cooking and there is nothing arch or fancy about the place. There is none of the artsy craftsy stuff as the cottage has its own gallery of exquisite doorways and window frames, mementoes of a time when the kings of Nepal ruled the region.
Sitla Estate: Also in the hotel-cum-home league is an old apple estate further east where we drank coffee on the roof at dawn watching the sunrise over the Himalayan peak of Nanda Devi. Sitla Estate has the same warmth and simplicity as The Cottage and is run by Vikram Maira, a delicious action man who doubles as kitchen genius. The easiest way to contact both these places is through Paddy Singh, a giant in every way, both in height and mountain knowledge. Paddy is one of the trekking greats of the Himalayas and has taken me on numerous treks. Email him at hindoostan_tours@yahoo.co.in.
Delhi: Citywise, Delhi is the jumping off point for so much of India, yet the traveller is stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea when it comes to hotels - either five star or backpack, with a motley crew of stinky carpet offerings in between. Annie and Martin Howard are another set of India-hands who are famous for their hospitality and elegance. They have built a Lutyens-style bungalow which is just far enough out of Delhi to be in the thick of the countryside yet an easy drive to the city or the airport. Staying at Tikli Bottom (honiwala@vsnl.com) is like staying in a desert version of a very chic houseparty in Gloucestershire.
Goa: Goa may have sold most of its soul to the dual gods of dollar and dope but pockets still remain. Siolim House (www.siolimhouse.com) is part palazzo/part home, part air/part light. It exists in a bubble - removed from the rest of Goa on the edge of Siolim village, one of the rare coastal villages that has somehow managed to escape the interest of the raggy-taggys. It is the former residence of the Portuguese governor of Macau and its present owners have managed to create the kind of small hotel that straddles luxury and privacy.
Kerala: With its hippie-lag and package deal fever, Goa is fast losing out to the backwaters of next door Kerala and its flush of newly-opened resorts and smaller hotels. A gem here is Mankota Island, owned and run by Jai and Lila Chacko. Located in the backwaters between Cochin and Alleppey, it offers the stillness and soft pace of a home rather than a hotel and is a private peach in that it only has two rooms and is an island entire unto itself. Again, the easiest way to make contact is through Paddy Singh on hindoostan_tours@yahoo.co.in
Cochin: Cochin itself is a city of dreams, the fort island being the spice town in ferment of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh. The Malabar House Residency (www.malabarhouse.com) is a lovely example of the small, chic and Indo-European run variety of hotel. Sitting right in the heart of Fort Cochin, its elegant rooms - some with romantic indoor-outdoor bathrooms - and the wafty Indo-Mediterranean restaurant look out across a cricket maidan to the whitewashed church of St Francis, the oldest European church in India.