This ancient palace hotel is not ancient at all

The hotel

Bujera Fort, Village Bujera, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

Check-in

Beyond the village of Bujera, the pitted road leading to the fort jostles you to and fro in your vehicle, but then there’s a salmon pink wall buried under a cascade of white bougainvillea, you pass through the elephant gate and into an interior courtyard with frangipani trees and lawns and an emerald swimming pool. Mirrored in the pool, two bulbous domes cap the suites on the upper terrace, fluted like an Ottoman turban. It looks like a 17th-century Mughal pleasure pavilion, yet despite its aged patina, Bujera Fort is barely a decade old, willed into being by Englishman Richard Hanlon, who honed his interior design skills working for Sotheby’s auction house, followed by stints in the Caribbean, France and the UK.

The look

“I just throw everything together and hope it works,” says Hanlon, of his design ethos, and work it does. It’s an eclectic mix of Rajasthani razzle-dazzle tempered by English country-house antiques and prints. There’s whimsy at every turn – a library with more than 2000 books with a feast of interior deco titles, a stately drawing room with antique furniture and a silver-plated grand piano, stone columns that might have come from a temple, table runners embroidered with elephants and more embroidered mirrorwork cushions in the flamboyant Rajasthani style that exploits every colour in the rainbow. Flowers are everywhere – scarlet frangipani blossoms adrift in bowls and on the dining table, floral arrangements that make the heart skip.

The room

The 14 guest rooms are enormous and individually furnished, some with four-poster beds with silver feet, balconies with jaali screens in the cloister rooms along the south-eastern side of the courtyard, private gardens and plunge pools in others. Common to all are crisp linens, pretty hand-painted wardrobes, marble-plated bathrooms with deep baths as well as walk-in showers and sturdy antique furnishings that might once have housed a bride’s dowry. The two master suites on the upper storey take the space and the glamour up several notches. If you’re travelling with a group or a family, take the Cottage Suites, which come with a private walled garden, plunge pool and dining pavilion.

Food + drink

Meals are served outside under the loggia which encircles the courtyard. Breakfast is a buffet with cereals, breads, home-made fruit preserves and eggs cooked to order. Lunch and dinner can be Indian or Western, and for guests at the tail end of an Indian odyssey the crunchy salads and quiches come as a relief. Most of the vegetables come fresh from Bujera’s own farm, poultry, meat, fish and fruits from the surrounding farmlands, with the focus on organic produce. It’s light, healthy and unpretentious cuisine, with only a fleeting appearance from ghee and mustard oil.

Out + about

Most of Udaipur’s upscale hotels sit on the edge of the city’s central Lake Pichola but Bujera Fort lies on the edge of a farming village among the dusty, lumpy hills of the Aravalli Ranges, surrounded by fields of wheat and guava trees. The standard village stroll takes you past a brickworks, snorting water buffalo in stone corrals, under feathery neem trees and past ornate houses belonging to local Jain families. The princely city of Udaipur is conveniently close for visits to the City Palace and puttering cruises on Lake Pichola, and Ganesh Emporium is a must if you want to emulate the Hanlon style.

The verdict

Hanlon has created a serene and beautiful hotel that combines the modern virtues of reliable plumbing and comfortable beds with the architecture and atmospherics of a Rajput palace. Staff are collectively wonderful, delivering G&Ts poolside or afternoon tea in bone china to the library with quiet professionalism.

The essentials

Rooms start from INR25,000 ($380) a night with breakfast during the mid-year hot season, rising to INR35,000 ($530) in the cooler months. The hotel is located a 30-minute drive from Udaipur’s City Palace. See Bujera Fort

Our rating out of five

★★★★½

Highlight

Sunset cocktails on the upper terrace, serenaded by peacocks.

Lowlight

The marble floors in the bathrooms become a skating rink when wet, put down towels.

The writer travelled at his own expense.