The Best Places in India

An Art Deco bungalow ringed by manicured lawns and reflecting pools in a city most travelers skip entirely on their way to Agra. Guest rooms have hand-carved headboards and Chikan-embroidered cushions, and open onto tiled patios. Breezy latticed passageways connect candlelit courtyards. The bar, all crystal glassware and chandelier glow, makes a scotch feel vaguely colonial in the best possible sense. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

A tented desert resort in the dunes outside Jaisalmer, The Serai puts its canvas suites on permanent stone bases, which turns out to be the difference between camping and something else entirely. Walled gardens with sunken pools appear at higher tiers, and the Royal Suite brings its own private spa. The staff pulls off the logistics of proper luxury in the Rajasthan desert, which is harder than it looks and more impressive for it.

Some guests sleep in glass cubes on a forested hillside, waking to 360-degree views of the Aravali mountains. This modern resort takes the opposite path from Udaipur's famous floating palace, trading ornate grandeur for clean lines, high-tech rooms, and 27 acres of quiet. Luxury tents, suites, and cottages feed into the Jiva spa and several restaurants, including an all-vegetarian signature dining room. The city is minutes away, but it feels considerably farther.

Twenty-six acres of Kerala coastline, where the Arabian Sea meets palm-fringed lawns and rooms built from plaster, wooden beams, and flared thatch roofing. The resort pulls in regional houseboat details and palm-leaf manuscript patterns alongside pillow menus and king beds, which is a comfortable tension to live inside. The Ivory Bar sits under a dramatic dome with a garden moat, which is exactly the kind of architectural choice that makes perfect sense once you're sipping cocktails and watching the stars.

Dal Lake fills the view from nearly every room at this Taj group hill resort, which sits high enough above Srinagar to swap the city's noise for birdsong and the faint outline of the Zabarwan Range. Walnut paneling in filigreed Kashmiri patterns, jamawar motifs on the headboards, and oversized bathrooms give the rooms a layered warmth. Request a balcony room, then let the sunrise do what sunrise does when there's a mountain lake involved.

Perched on a forested hillside a short walk from Samudra Beach, this Taj resort sits beside a quiet lagoon with dense trees on three sides, which keeps it calmer than the coastline it technically belongs to. Keralan architecture with a Balinese lean runs through the cottages and villas, and the Jiva spa handles the rest. Three restaurants cover seafood, regional Indian cooking, and all-day eating without sending you into town.

Perched 4,000 feet up in the Western Ghats, this eco-conscious luxury resort sits across 180 acres of rainforest that tourism has barely touched. Massive picture windows keep the mist-draped hills in view from every angle, and all 62 rooms and villas face the cascading greenery. A 30,000-square-foot spa, an infinity pool, and concierge-guided treks by foot or zipline fill the days. Coorg is famous for its coffee, and the on-site cafe is not a bad place to remember that.

Willingdon Island sits in Cochin Harbor like a colonial afterthought, and this resort leans into that history with conviction. The original Victorian wing, built in the 1930s, gives rooms that feel genuinely soaked in another era, while the Tower Wing trades atmosphere for sunset views over the waterways. Four restaurants, a spa, and an Ayurvedic center round things out. The Michelin Guide includes it among its selected hotels.

Floor-to-ceiling windows look out on a city where the Golden Temple sets an impossible architectural bar, so Taj Swarna wisely leans into stately warmth rather than compete. This full-service luxury hotel keeps rooms plush with Forest Essentials bath products and Ploh robes, runs three restaurants from traditional Amritsar cooking to Sichuan, and offers a Jiva spa with Ayurvedic therapies long enough to rearrange your entire afternoon.

A Dutch-era mansion in Fort Cochin's historic quarter, Malabar House is the kind of colonial-house boutique hotel that somehow feels neither museumified nor stripped out for a design magazine. Rooms are furnished with antiques and art, air conditioning being about the only concession to the present century. Courtyard, pool, private balconies, and the Malabar Junction restaurant inside, with Chinese fishing nets and a neighbourhood called Jewtown a short walk out front.

Tented suites with canopied ceilings and Gond artworks sit just outside Bandhavgarh National Park, where the tiger population is one of the denser ones on the subcontinent. The Oberoi Vindhyavilas is a luxury wildlife resort spread across 21 acres, with pool villas overlooking fields and forest and safaris at dawn to justify the early alarm. A spa and a tranquil lake keep the afternoon from feeling like a nature documentary.

Thi-Lar-Siro means "land born from the sea" in the Great Andamanese language, which is about as good a name as a resort can have. Reached by ferry from Port Blair, this stilted, thatched property on Havelock Island is built into the existing tree line with local timber, stone, and floor-to-ceiling glass facing the Andaman Sea. Marine biologists are on staff year-round, which sets the tone before you've unpacked.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame a working mango orchard on the edge of Sasan Gir National Park, home to Asia's last wild lions, and the resort leans hard into that fact. The 38 rooms and pavilions step up in space and privacy, with warm contemporary interiors that make the outside feel like a feature rather than a backdrop. Lion safaris, outdoor yoga, and village visits sit alongside Gujarati and Italian menus at the restaurants.

Copper roofs catch the last light across eight hectares of terraced hillside in the Western Himalayas, which is a better alarm clock than most hotels can offer. Amaya is a sustainably built resort outside Kasauli, with suites, chalets, and villas hand-constructed from local stone and brick. Interiors are deliberately spare, so the pine forests and famously clear mountain skies do the decorating. It earned a spot on The 50 Discovery list.

Four two-bedroom eco-villas tucked into their own palm-and-frangipani enclaves on a quiet stretch of the Konkan coast, each with a private infinity pool and nothing between you and the Arabian Sea. Coconut wood furniture, jute rugs, open-air living pavilions: the natural-materials commitment is thorough enough to feel like a design manifesto. If the point is to disappear, Coco Shambhala has thought of most of the logistics already.

The house-made vermouths and tinctures are what give this Kala Ghoda cocktail bar its edge. Americano sits inside a California-inspired neighborhood spot but the bar program holds its own, running through classics, riffs on classics, and originals that pull in local flavors without making a fuss about it. The kind of place where the drinks list was written by someone who actually reads other drinks lists.

The cocktails here are numbered rather than named, which turns out to suit the vibe perfectly. Hoots' is a small, dimly lit cocktail bar tucked below wine bar Perch in Vasant Vihar, cosy enough to feel like someone's well-stocked living room. The drinks are carefully constructed, an Old Fashioned riffing on miso, a Whisky Sour finished with chamomile foam. The 50 Discovery listing has begun to spread the word, so the secret is getting out.