Boutique Hotels in India

For most travellers Rajasthan is the finest single introduction to India, and it is where all the club's Indian hotels are found. A desert state the size of Germany in the north-west, it was never directly colonised, so its princely courts kept their forts and palaces — many still in royal-family hands — and the architectural inheritance is unmatched anywhere in the country. The draw is the combination: monumental forts and working palaces, a singular desert cuisine, the Bishnoi conservation villages, the Thar dunes and the sandstone city of Jaisalmer near the Pakistan border.

Where to stay: the club lists three hotels across the state's centre and west, from the grand royal palace of Jodhpur, through a tiny purpose-built fort in the open Marwar desert, to a contemporary sandstone fort alone in the Thar outside Jaisalmer. Each is covered in full on the Rajasthan page.

Beyond Rajasthan, the country opens into a series of trips worth taking on their own terms. The golden triangle — Delhi, Agra and Jaipur — is the standard first circuit, built around the Taj Mahal and the Mughal capitals, and pairs naturally with Rajasthan. The south is a different country in feel: Kerala for its backwaters, spice hills and slower rhythm; Tamil Nadu for its temple cities. The east holds Kolkata and the Darjeeling tea hills, with Assam and the wild north-east beyond. And the far north climbs into the Himalaya — Ladakh, Himachal, the hill stations of the Raj — for mountains and Buddhist culture. Each deserves the time most itineraries fail to give it, and each is a natural direction for the club to grow.

India needs a little groundwork. Most nationalities require a visa, now straightforwardly issued online as an e-visa before travel. The domestic flight network is extensive and cheap and the best way to cover the long internal distances, while trains, though slower, are an experience in themselves. October to March is the broad sweet spot for the north and the deserts; the south and the hills follow their own calendars, and the June-to-September monsoon reshapes where is comfortable. A private car with driver is the norm for travel within a region — the roads are not for casual self-drive — and your hotel will arrange the registered guides worth using.