Fifteen years ago, my brand-new boyfriend and I decided to skip family Christmas and go to India. We were seeking glamour and romance and stayed in the most famous hotels in Rajasthan. We dressed beautifully, bearing hatboxes and sharp linen suits. We kissed in the mists around the Taj Mahal at dawn.
This is not that story! This year, we decided to take our six-year-old son on a very different sort of trip around Rajasthan. We wanted to travel light, take local transport, and be free to change our plans at the last moment. We were looking for small, historic hotels with character. And we wanted to instill in our son a real love for adventurous, curious and respectful travel.
So, we packed only what we could easily carry on our backs (no wheelies) and made no fixed plans before going. We agreed to travel on sleeper trains and to make our plans following personal recommendations as we moved around and met people, just hopping from place to place over two weeks.
We had planned the trip mainly for Lelio, wanting to show him an experience away from manicured beaches and the ice cream boats that potter up alongside you on the Italian coast. We wanted a little culture shock and, 24 hours after we left Rome, as our airport rickshaw dropped us off outside the main gate of the Old Fortress of Jaisalmer, we received it.
On leaving Rome, we originally planned to stay a night in Delhi, and then move on to the Taj Mahal and make our way slowly west, but en route we decided we should reverse our itinerary. So, after 18 hours of travel, we landed in Delhi and immediately took the locals’ bus to the internal travel terminal and bought our tickets to the recently opened airport of Jaisalmer, departing just an hour later.
Jaisalmer
Known as the Golden City, Jaisalmer lies on the edge of the Thar Desert, which for centuries loomed as one of the most desolate and dangerous segments of the Indian overland trade route. Long camel trains laden with silks and spices would stumble out of the desert to be awestruck by the grandeur of the castle walls.
The three of us piled into a rickshaw at the tiny local military airport, longing for a quick transit, but discovered that the inner fortress where our hotel was located was only accessible to pedestrians. Thus we were dropped off at the main gate. With some forward planning you should call ahead and get the hotel to at least pick up your bags. The press of people and the noise was overwhelming and hundreds of people were trying to squeeze through a gate designed precisely to repel marauding hordes. I gripped Lelio’s little hand as hard as I could, terrified for a moment that we had made a real mistake taking such a little body with his lighthouse hair so far from home. But then the press eased as we moved through the gate and we stumbled into the wide open space of the first inner ring of the castle. The cacophony of car horns and shouts were replaced with the more cheering sounds of vendors calling, cows lowing, and our eyes became adjusted to the brightness as colourful saris fluttered around us.
We wandered up the steep switchbacks within the fortress toward the battlements and into the hotel that we had booked last minute, Killa Bhawan, and everything changed. It would be hard to imagine a more delightful start to our trip. This tiny hotel has only 8 rooms, but is one of the most elegant and charming small hotels I’ve stayed in. Beautifully restored, it sits inside the very walls of the Fort of the Golden City. Mr Bhanu, the manager, is a master of the refreshing welcome. Each room is decorated with local silks and satins and each boasts a different perch point from which to stare over the battlements and watch the vast flocks of pigeons swoop and swirl to evade the lone hawks. Lelio ran pell mell over and through each room before settling, rapturously, into a window seat to stare entranced over another world.
Each morning we would linger over exquisite breakfasts of freshly made-to-order pancakes and spicy Indian tomato stews with chai and green tea, before setting out to explore the city and desert. Due to our last-minute arrival, we had to change rooms each night, but over three nights it meant we stayed in three very different rooms, each with its own private sitting area, outside and in.
You can do a day or night trip to the sand dunes and spend a night under the stars. Our last-minute planning caused trouble as the nicer camps were all booked up, leaving only pretty tatty places that didn’t inspire us, so eventually we settled for only a day trip. I have heard that some of the camps are lovely, but the gap between photos and reality may well be huge, so choose carefully. However, it’s worth the day trip; it is fairly amazing how quickly you reach true sand dunes, and we played all afternoon in the slipping sands and watched the camels sway away along the horizon before heading back to town.
We stopped along the way at Joshida Talao, one of the oldest surviving oases in the Thar, and at the famous Ghost Town of Rajasthan, Bahalgarh, a village that was completely abandoned overnight in the 1800s. It has not been touched and the perfectly preserved rooms and temples are alluringly spooky. It’s a popular tourist attraction within India as it is said to be haunted by the ghosts of the former families. Some 300 years ago, it used to be a prosperous village of Paliwal Brahmins under the state of Jaisalmer. According to the legend, the evil eyes of Salim Singh, the powerful and debauched prime minister of the state, fell on the daughter of the village head, and the entire village decided to leave rather than live under him any longer.
On the hills above Jaisalmer lie Bada Bagh and Vyas Chhatri, evocative names for the ornate cenotaphs commemorating the royal and Brahmin families respectively. These are stunning places from which to watch the sunset; I loved them, but avoid the midday light as they are not very well maintained and they benefit from a little softness.
In town, we would join long lines for street food whenever we saw them, and ate crispy fresh pakoras and spicy dumplings from market carts for lunch. The one standout restaurant was a beautiful meal at The Trio in town. This was easily some of the best food we had in our whole trip—earthy curries mopped up with fluffy-yet-crispy naans. They have created a romantic terrace right under the fortress walls with tables and cushion-strewn banquettes, so you can dine while underneath the illuminated battlements.
It is worth a small digression to note that Lelio, like all Italians far from home, did miss Italian food, of course. Early on, though, he became wildly excited by a restaurant advertising “real Italian pizza.” When a soggy naan covered in sweet cream and what I think was a jalfrezi sauce arrived as his “margherita pizza,” he was vastly disappointed and stuck to pulao and tandoori chicken from then on. His disappointment was a blessing as he never asked again. (In fairness, I felt the same way about the wine.)
Jodhpur
A day later than we had planned, we moved from Gold to Blue. We took a local train to Jodhpur and travelled third-class sleeper, to Lelio’s delight. The eight hour trip was enormous fun as we shared tiffins, photos and sign language with other families. In this I would say travelling with a child was actually easier as people wanted to help and chat, and loved seeing us with him.
We spent a part of our journey trying to wangle a room at our first choice, RAAS Jodhpur, of which we have heard wonderful things, but it was completely full and not to be. We ended up staying in Thikana House, an historic property buried right in the middle of the old town. This was definitely simpler but still very charming, a stained-glass bedecked merchant’s house (haveli) right in the old city, lovingly restored by a family. The family all live in the property and take great pride in preparing traditional Indian breakfasts on the 5th floor roof terrace.
The highlight of Jodhpur for us was the fortress with its attendant museum, stuffed full of hundreds of years of weapons, armour, carriages, palanquins, costumes, and art from the last four centuries. We meandered back down the hill from the fortress through the famous Blue Alley, a long lane of houses painted entirely blue and studded with some extraordinary traditional and very modern murals and wall art. I also loved exploring the preserved havelis with rich museum style displays and artifacts of trade and home life.
Obviously, many of our decisions have to be seen through the eyes of a small boy, which is how we ended up eating at Dylan, an entirely blue (entirely, down to the tableware) café named after the owner’s love of one Bob Dylan, and exclusively playing his music. Lelio loved it, although I was just relieved his scrambled eggs came out yellow rather than blue. The Indian owner was charming and sat down to teach Lelio some Dylan riffs on his guitar. While it fit our brief of quirky and independent, I’m not sure I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone past their gap year!
Rawla Narlai
Then we went down to Rawla Narlai, a 17th century hunting Lodge of the Maharajas of Jodhpur—a scion of the family has done it up in the last 20 years. It’s located in a very small town called Narlai, overlooked by a white elephant sculpture perched high on a hill above the town.
This was definitely a change of pace from our backpacking vibe, as it is simply stunning. As we drove up to be greeted with a spectacular low drum beat and wreaths of flowers, I hastily ran to my room to shake out the least wrinkled of my outfits. Within minutes of arriving in our room came the trill of a call from reception—a leopardess and her cubs had been spotted not five minutes drive away, would we like to see?
It was spectacular, and Lelio was thrilled to see the cubs gamboling away in the rocky shrubs.
When we got back, we dressed up as much as we were able, for Rawla Narlai offers truly one of the most spectacular dinners I can imagine. After a welcome drink by candlelight, we clambered into the back of a well-used bullock cart. The cart jostled and swayed through town as night fell and a sadhu walked behind carrying a torch which threw eerie shadows along the village walls. His chants raise the otherworldly feeling.
We moved through the jungle and arrived at a vast stepwell that used to serve the village and the lodge, illuminated by hundreds of hand-lit twinkling candles. We watched fresh chapatis being made on an open fire while the wonderfully varied and excellent hot dishes kept coming. I remember complex spices and ice-cold chardonnay (our first in India). We ate accompanied by the low slow chants of a local yogi, and the service was exquisite. We came back sated and starstruck and curled Lelio up in a corner of the beautifully appointed bar as we had a nightcap. The knowledgeable barman who made us a series of delightfully innovative twists on Rob Roys and whiskey sours, which we slightly regretted the next day, as we blinked awake at 5am for a dawn safari in chic kitted out safari jeeps and saw crocodiles, wild peacocks, deer, and many other gorgeous creatures before eating tiffin breakfast and drinking hot chai as the sun rose.
Kumbhalgarh Fort
On the recommendation of our host, we took a car from there to the “Great Wall of India,” the longest contiguous wall after the Great Wall of China (no, I hadn’t heard of it either). This was very much a little boy’s dream fortress, an easy one day trip from Udaipur and an intoxicating view of the might of the Mughals. There are only a few rooms open, but they have wonderful hunting frescos of elephants, crocodiles, and tigers, and the views were incredible.
Kumbhalgarh (which naturally prompted us to sing Kumbhalgarh, my love.. for the rest of the trip) was a stunning place to spend a day and walk a little. We stayed at the Aodhi Resort – our hosts at Rawla Narlai had called ahead and we were a little overwhelmed to tumble out the car after a 2-hour transfer to be greeted with big bunches of roses and petals being thrown from above the gate. It’s a simple place, but hugely welcoming and the curries were delicious.
Udaipur
From there we took a taxi to Udaipur. We stayed in the Amet Haveli, one of the former women’s palaces that sit along the banks of the lake and look back at the more famous Lake Palace hotel. We realized how fortunate we had been to have reversed our itinerary at the beginning—Udaipur was a completely different experience to the Rajasthan we had been seeing. It was quite literally paved in marble and felt pristine and clean. Lelio immediately pointed out that there were no cows on the streets, for the first time in our trip.
We had a room that reached out onto the water and could have lazed away days in our silk cushion covered window seat, fingers almost trailing in the water, as small boats puttered softly by.
Goa
After all the adventure, we needed to slow down a little for our last couple of days before getting home, and flew from Udaipur to Goa for our last two nights.
We have both been many times in the past and intended to go very north or very south, but decided to start in Anjuna as it was a Friday, and we wanted to take Lelio to the Sunday market and trance party at Hilltop Café in Vagator that I had last been to many years ago. This is smaller and less tatty than the famous Saturday market in a soccer field near town. We dressed him in acid-bright tie-dye and off we set. The market, like me, has grown stately and is much cleaner and more charming than I recall. We got Lelio a few glowsticks and I enjoyed the vertiginous experience of dancing with my son in a place I had last danced when wondering whether Y2K was going to affect my flight home.
In the end we stayed both nights, a bit weary of constant travel, and having found a pretty, wooden chalet-style Anjuna hotel with a lovely pool and made one great discovery…
The Slow Tide, Anjuna Beach
This is a new cocktail bar/restaurant which opened in December 2022 at the very north of Anjuna beach—a huge game changer for that area. Its extremely understated and chic design paired beautifully with really exceptional modern South Asian cuisine and sublime cocktails.
They call themselves “haute hippie” and mix nods back to the old Goa days with a freshly modern approach to both food and design. I loved a delightfully fresh tequila-based cocktail called Acid Erick (all the drinks are named after the storied denizens of the area, and come with potted biographies in lieu of ingredient lists) which came with a knowing if not-so-subtle wink at the area’s history. They’ve carved out their own spot of clean and quiet at the end of the famous but overly crowded beach, and I think may be the harbinger of a new revival for Anjuna after a decades-long slide into mass tourism, tinny music, and tat. The small-plates approach was a modern take on South Asian tastes and was all delicious. I delighted in my first salad in almost two weeks, while Valerio and Lelio played football on the beach as the sun set on the last days of our trip.
The half-discovery…
We had one other delightful meal at the self-consciously cool Tigra in town, which boasts a fantastic bar.
A few notes…
One small recommendation: we got Lelio a Forever Kids child’s camera—it’s a real digital camera made for small hands and was honestly great for anyone pre-phone. He loved downloading his pictures and making an album at the end of the trip. It’s a great low-cost present for adventurous godchildren!
A lot of people have asked me about keeping him healthy. I brought prepackaged strong probiotic “shots” and gave him one daily at breakfast, and of course we avoided ice, opened bottled water, etc. But we ate a lot of street food as long as it was cooked in front of us, and none of us had any issues. He did, I admit, eat a lot of rice.
Overall… It was one of the most magical trips of our lives and I wish I could do it again, for the first time. Certainly doing everything at the last minute informed our choices more than we would have liked, but India is so full of quirky options, it always worked out. The one thing we were most happy to have done was start east and move inland, which meant that by the time we arrived in Udaipur, it felt like a treat to see such clean streets and no cows.
Besides culture, Lelio did get a taste of empty fame; they adore children and were not used to blondes, so he probably had to pose with a fixed grin almost a thousand times, easily over a hundred requests a day. It was inescapable but never overbearing, so I tried to make him grin and bear it as long as possible.
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