Hotel Index
Premium Hotels Across India
Every real premium hotel we book, across every region — pick a destination below or see the full spread.
Chennai, Tamil Nadu
The Park Chennai
★★★★★
The Park Chennai is a design hotel on Anna Salai, the city's main road, built on the site of the old Gemini film studios. The interiors are by Conran and Partners, and film is the running theme, from the lobby to the rooftop. It is central and lively, with a poolside bar, the Leather Bar, and the Italian restaurant Aqua, and it is popular for its nightlife. The rooms are compact and sharply styled rather than large. It suits travellers who want a contemporary, well-placed base in the middle of the city rather than a garden retreat.
Madurai, Tamil Nadu
Gateway Pasumalai Madurai — IHCL SeleQtions
★★★★☆
The Gateway sits on Pasumalai hill, on a wooded estate of about sixty acres south of the city. The core is an 1890s British bungalow, and the grounds fall away in terraces with old trees, a pool, and clear views across Madurai to the Meenakshi temple towers, especially at night when they are lit. Rooms are in the bungalow and in newer garden blocks. It is a Taj-group hotel, calm and green, ten minutes from the noise of the old town but entirely apart from it.
Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu
Ideal Beach Resort, Mamallapuram
★★★★☆
Ideal Beach Resort is a family-run garden resort on the coast road, a few kilometres north of the town. It has been going since the 1970s, and it feels settled: low cottages among old trees, a lawn running down to a small private beach, two pools and a seafood restaurant. The rooms are simple and clean rather than grand. It is the sort of place people come back to, quieter and better value than the larger resorts, and still an easy drive to the monuments and to Chennai.
Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu
Le Dupleix, Pondicherry
★★★★☆
Le Dupleix is an 18th-century mansion in White Town, once the home of the town's mayor and named for the French governor Joseph Dupleix. It is built around a courtyard shaded by a large mango tree, with a small pool, wide teak staircases, and antique-furnished rooms above a colonnaded restaurant. The heritage detailing is kept: shuttered windows, tiled floors, high ceilings with fans. It is a few minutes' walk from the Promenade and the ashram, in the quietest part of the old town. It suits travellers who want the colonial setting with the antiques rather than a contemporary conversion.
Agra, Uttar Pradesh
Trident, Agra
★★★★☆
Trident Agra is a low-rise garden hotel on Fatehabad Road, under ten minutes from the Taj Mahal. It is the premium sister brand to The Oberoi Amarvilas, run by the same group but priced well below it. The building wraps around courtyards and a central water channel, in a nod to the Mughal charbagh gardens the city is known for. Rooms look onto the gardens or the pool. The grounds are large and quiet, which matters in Agra. There is a spa with Ayurvedic therapies, a pool, a kids' club, and one all-day restaurant and bar. The hotel draws a quarter of its power from on-site solar and bottles its own water. This is the sensible premium choice for the Golden Triangle's Agra night — a real garden hotel close to the monument, without the palace-hotel price.
Corbett, Uttarakhand
Aahana — The Corbett Wilderness
★★★★☆
Aahana sits on the Kosi river a little further from the park gates, on a wooded plot with its own stretch of riverbank and a resident troupe of langurs in the trees. The cottages are simpler and more rustic than the Taj's, in local stone and wood, several with a private plunge pool. There is a large communal pool, a spa, and a riverside deck used for meals and evening bonfires. Safaris into Corbett's Bijrani and Jhirna zones are arranged through the resort's own naturalists. It is a genuine jungle-lodge feel at a lower key and lower price than the riverside luxury resorts nearby.
Mussoorie, Uttarakhand
Kasmanda Palace, Mussoorie
★★★★☆
Kasmanda Palace was built in 1836 and later became the summer residence of the Maharaja of Kasmanda, right on Mall Road in the middle of Mussoorie. It keeps its turrets, wood-panelled halls and a small private chapel, hung with old hunting trophies and portraits, and it has featured as a film location more than once. The garden looks out over the town and, past it, the plains. The rooms are large and old-fashioned rather than modern, and the location, a level walk from Mall Road and the Mussoorie library, is hard to beat for anyone who wants to be in the town rather than above it.
Nainital, Uttarakhand
Manu Maharani, Nainital
★★★★☆
Manu Maharani sits on the lake road in Mallital, at the quieter end of Naini Lake from the main Mall Road bazaar. It now operates as Namah Nainital, a member of Radisson Individuals Retreats, under its long-familiar name. It is a modern hotel rather than a heritage one, built up in tiers so that most rooms get some kind of lake or garden view, with a spa, an indoor games room and a restaurant that opens onto the water. It suits travellers who want to be by the lake without the Mall Road crowds right outside, with an easy walk along the water to the boat jetty and the Naina Devi temple.
Rishikesh, Uttarakhand
Taj Rishikesh Resort & Spa
★★★★★
The Taj sits on a bend of the Ganges at Shivpuri, upstream of central Rishikesh, in the stretch known for white-water rafting. The rooms and cottages step down a forested hillside toward the river, most with a private balcony over the water. There is a spa, an infinity pool, and a rafting base run out of the resort for guests who want the river without arranging it separately. It keeps a quieter, more conventional resort format than Ananda's structured wellness stays — a base for rafting, yoga and the aarti at Triveni Ghat, about twenty minutes downstream.
Darjeeling, West Bengal
Mayfair Darjeeling
★★★★★
Mayfair occupies a former summer residence of the Sikkimese royal family, on the Jawahar Road ridge a short walk from the Mall. It is built up in tiers of turreted, slate-roofed cottages set into terraced gardens, with wood-panelled interiors and open fireplaces. There is an indoor pool and spa, and the grounds themselves, planted with rhododendron and magnolia, are worth the walk around on their own. Its position, close to the Mall, the zoo and the ropeway, makes it a practical base for Darjeeling's sights without losing the character a purely modern hotel would lack.
Kolkata, West Bengal
The Park, Kolkata
★★★★★
The Park sits on Park Street, in the middle of the city's old entertainment and dining strip, and it has run as a design-forward hotel since long before that became a common idea in India. The rooms and public spaces mix contemporary design with local art and craft, and the hotel is as known for its nightlife — Someplace Else and Tantra, both long-running Kolkata institutions — as for its rooms. There is a small pool and a spa on the upper floors. It suits travellers who want to be in the middle of the Park Street scene rather than in a quieter colonial setting.
Kashmir to Kanyakumari
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