Passages in India
If you've ever wanted to live like a king, rub shoulders with princes and make small talk with maharanis, Rajasthan is the place for you. Dripping with history and culture, its frescoed palaces and forts have been converted into hotels offering olde-worlde hospitality and an inspiring trip back in time. Fionnuala McHugh drifts stylishly through Jodhpur, Rohetgarh and Jaipur, discovering some of the Indian state's best-kept secrets.
In spring 1986, the writer Bruce Chatwin spent two months in a fort called Rohet in the Indian desert state of Rajasthan. There, he worked on the first draft of what would become The Songlines. He described this paradise to his father: ' ... a building going back to the 16th century, around a courtyard with neem trees and a lawn, its outer walls lapped by a lake with little islands, temples on them ...'
That letter is quoted in Nicholas Shakespeare's piercing biography of Chatwin. It makes Rohetgarh (garh means fort) sound like Arcadia, a spiritual place beyond the experience of the rest of us. When William Dalrymple decided to write his wonderful book on Delhi, City Of Djinns, he was so convinced of Rohetgarh's spell he began it at Chatwin's desk 'in a desperate bid for inspiration'.
The good news is anyone can stay at Rohetgarh. The even better news is that Rajasthan is filled with establishments under the umbrella Heritage Hotels: not quite five-star luxury (if your idea of a holiday is room service, groaning mini-bars, lift music and satellite television, then Heritage is not for you), but many circles of existence and delight higher than the run-of-the-mill hostelries that put up package tours in, say, Goa.
If you are an imaginative sort, you can spend your days in a Heritage Hotel, gazing at museum displays of palatial life, your evenings sipping cocktails, pretending you're part of a romantic, gilded past, and your nights under twinkling mosaics and erotic carvings. You can make small talk with polo-playing, tiger-shooting aristocrats and expansive (but not expensive) forays out into the countryside to see rare, protected beasts. And, if you still have a secret hankering for Goa, you can also indulge in a little cultural-exchange drug-taking - of which more later.
I happen to know this because I spent a splendid time last Christmas in a number of Heritage Hotels with several friends, including two children, aged seven and nine. The children had never been to India before and, in answer to your first question, no one suffered a moment's sickness.