Insia Lacewalla

October/November 2026: Safari season’s back. Here are the best jungle lodges in India handpicked for safari lovers ready for patient discoveries, from tiger country in Madhya Pradesh to rhino grasslands in Assam and leopard hills in Rajasthan. We’ve also mapped out the best amenities to watch out for in each of these lodges. A safari used to mean a rattling jeep, a park gate and a long queue of other jeeps. Where you stay changes that. The best wildlife resorts and jungle lodges in India sit on the edge of India's bountiful national parks or inside private forest of their own, so the wildlife starts well before the gate does. An alarm call and your morning chai can lead to pugmarks around a watering hole at dawn, or a barking deer somewhere below your treehouse. Staying at these also means better sightings. The naturalists at these wildlife resorts and lodges know the buffer zones, river gorges and corridors, and they steer you away from the convoys. Many go well beyond the jeep, too. You can walk through Satpura, canoe the Denwa River, take an elephant safari into Pobitora's high grass, or sit in an underground photography hide at Pench, eye-level with the water. India's jungles aren't one safari but several: tigers in Bandhavgarh, Pench, Tadoba and Panna, one-horned rhinos in Assam, Asiatic lions in Gir, leopards among Jawai's granite hills, and elephants in Kabini and Rajaji. These wildlife resorts and lodges are just as varied, from treehouses and rammed-earth villas to s

Delhi does every damn sort of hotel well, and while that might sound like you’ll struggle to choose, it actually means you’re bound to find a place tailored very specifically to what you want out of a trip to the city. Want old money? Go colonial. The Imperial and Maidens are grande dames with art collections that have curators and bars where the gossip's a century deep. Want new money? Aerocity and the Diplomatic Enclave have you covered, where Andaz and The Leela Palace are locked in a very cold war arms race over butler service, rooftop pools, and ever more elaborate ways of saying we thought of everything. And if you'd rather skip the lobby altogether, there are homestays in Defence Colony, Hauz Khas, Gulmohar Park, run by people who've lived here for decades and will tell you more over breakfast than any concierge desk manages in a week. The thread running through all of it is that Delhi doesn't do half-measures with its history. A haveli in Chandni Chowk gets rebuilt brick by brick rather than faked; a suite gets named after the architect who drew up the city it sits in. This is a city stacked in layers – Mughal, colonial, post-Independence, right up to whatever's being built next door – and the best of its hotels build their stays around their area. Here's what's worth booking. The best Delhi hotels at a glance: 🏛️ Best for heritage: The Imperial New Delhi 🦚 Best colonial grande dame: Maidens Hotel 🛎️ Best for butler service: The Leela Palace 🏡 Best homestay: Thik

Goa and drinking go hand-in-hand. Hell, Goa and binge-drinking go hand-in-hand, even, if I’m perfectly honest. There’s no better way to spend time in the land of do nothing than sampling some great alcohol – whether that’s local-made People’s beer, fancy cocktail bars that consistently end up bagging top spots in global rankings, or even the lethal local cashew liquor called feni, which is strong enough to floor a horse.  And yes, Goa’s drinking scene had, at one point, coalesced into a fairy-lit shack slash EDM strip situation. That’s a thing of the past; the best bars are now housed inside converted garages, old Portuguese homes, and beachfront sheds with better back bars than most big-city hotels. And this guide, compiled by a local who loves tipple, is your entry point into navigating the good from the bad from the ugly.  How did we rank these bars? One thing we didn’t do is rank this list by Instagram followers. Every bar here has earned its spot, because it does one thing brilliantly, whether that's a 300-strong rum collection, a vacuum-tube sound system playing 1960s vinyl, or simply the best chorizo-jam toast on the coast. I drank (responsibly… mostly) across North and South Goa (helps that I’m a local), returning to the places that held up on a quiet Tuesday as well as a heaving Saturday. And these are deliberately mixed up: the internationally ranked cocktail bars putting Goa on Asia's 50 Best lists sit alongside unmarked speakeasies you'll need a DM to enter, and o

Forget the party strip. Your mornings could mean dolphins. You could be sipping on a kombucha that actually tastes halfway decent at sunset. Your biggest decision for the day could be choosing which beach bed’s going to get the best shade through the afternoon. It’s pretty common knowledge that Goa’s a multi-pronged affair: there’s the Vagator party circuit, the nature and wildlife bits, the adventure-heavy side, and then there’s the calm, quiet beach life that catapulted the coastal state to international fame back in the ’60s. The kind where days blur into long lunches, swims, naps and sunsets, with very little reason to check the time. If you’re after the latter, location matters. The best beachside hotels in Goa put the sand practically at your doorstep, while giving you enough of a buffer from the crowds, traffic and general holiday chaos. However, you've got to think of whether you're angling towards the north, which is more bustling, with busier beaches and more to do if you're into a varied nightlife, whereas South Goa promises pristine, quiet beaches, with much more to do on the nature front.  This guide rounds up some of the best beachside and waterfront hotels across the state, from the north to the south, and across budgets. 

India's big cities will eat you alive if you let them. The trick is having the right base. Suburban hotels have the upper hand when it comes to peace and quiet (and the best array of boutique properties), while hotels in the city centre are a no-brainer if you’re there to get your money’s worth on all the tourist spots.  Finding a balance between the two isn’t the easiest, but these hotels don’t stop at the convenience of a soft bed and good service. They're well-positioned, independently minded, and connected to the places they're in. The kind where the concierge knows the city, while the restaurants and amenities are equally worth staying in for. Whether you're passing through or taking your time, start here.

Yes, the biryani in Hyderabad is legendary. But Hyderabad's dining scene is growing up. From hole-in-the-wall izakayas to refined Cantonese kitchens, moonlit rooftop bars to neighbourhood trattorias that feel like they've been transplanted from a Roman backstreet, the city's appetite for the new and the nuanced has never been keener than now.  This guide rounds up some of the best local and refined haunts, serving everything from craft cocktails and bar snacks to full-blown tasting menus, so you can eat your way through Hyderabad without once reaching for the dum pot… even if that isn’t a recommendation.

When it comes to seafood, you’re going to have to forget the beach-shack stereotype. Goa’s most rewarding fish thalis aren’t found by the sea, but are tucked away in quiet villages, family-run kitchens, and unassuming dining rooms where lunch is a ritual, and culinary pride runs deep. From time-honoured classics to contemporary interpretations, these are the places that locals swear by and the ones that remind you that real Goan flavours are simmered slowly and served with heart.  

India’s boutique hotel scene is in the midst of a bit of a renaissance. Generic, cookie-cutter luxury’s been chucked out of the window – and thank god, I say. The most compelling properties right now are seriously rethinking luxury in the Indian context, and that means creating spaces where architecture and hospitality sit comfortably between old and new.  The result, when done right, can be stunning. The best design-forward hotels, like the ones I’ve listed in this guide, aren’t too obsessed with the tired heritage aesthetic – not overtly, anyway. Nor have they fallen into the cold, minimalist, modernist trap that repels Indian maximalism. And the country, large as it is, possesses a variety that is bound to have something for every traveller: revamped Rajasthani havelis, fortresses flanking the Konkan coast, snow-topped retreats clinging to the very tops of the Himalayas.  The hotels in the list I’ve put together go beyond the perfect mattress and fancy bathroom – and while a couple are pricey, the others won’t break the bank. Their trademark is an authentic luxury that feels superior, organic, beautifully crafted. Far from a Dubai hotel catalogue is what I mean to say.

Pollachi itself is an hour from Coimbatore and a world away from the kind of Tamil Nadu that shows up on curated travel lists. This is coconut grove country, where the landscape stretches out in verdant fields with a river weaving through, and CGH Earth Saha has placed its three-bedroom villa right in the middle of it. The avocados are the first thing you'll notice on the driveway, hanging heavy from the trees. It sets the tone for everything that follows: abundant, but quiet. The pool mirrors the river below, and a garden overlooks the Anamalai Tiger Reserve, bustling with wildlife. And you can sit with it all, at length, with a cup of tea. The Pollachi Papyrus, a collective dedicated to documenting this specific part of Tamil Nadu, has curated the photographs on the wall, shot from the surrounding village and the forests of the Anamalai Tiger Reserve. As for the decor, fabrics and textiles come from repurposed saris, cane-woven chairs and baskets do the furnishing, and Karaikudi enamelware, in the vivid colours of that craft tradition, turn up as pots and bins. The three bedrooms – Forest, Water and Ceramics – are each an extension of the landscape around them. Food here is Kongunadu cooking, and it deserves your full attention. The cuisine of the region is distinct from the coastal traditions of Tamil Nadu and rooted instead in the inland agricultural landscape of Coimbatore. Horsegram rasam, say, or kara kuzhambu; fresh coconut-based chutneys and local millets that are on

Fort Kochi is known for its charming lanes, the Chinese fishing nets that are as photogenic as advertised, the cafés, and the famous Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Into this very self-aware setting, CGH Earth has placed Brunton Boatyard: a restored Victorian-era shipyard right on the edge of Kochi harbour, with a facade that looks like it belongs to a colonial trading company – which, for the record, it once did. The original name of the shipbuilding firm that operated here, Brunton & Co., has been kept on. It's a building that carries its history visibly, which is more than most heritage hotels can honestly claim. All 22 rooms face the sea. Lazy cargo ships, fishing boats returning at dawn, dolphins dipping in and out of the water, and sunsets over the palm-fringed shores of Vypin Island have converted more than a few city dwellers into slow travellers. Period furniture, four-poster beds, and deep verandas built for the specific purpose of watching ships come in with the tide make each room feel designed by someone who understood what the harbour outside was going to do at different hours of the day. Location, as they say, is everything: the Fort Kochi–Vypeen ferry terminal is a one-minute walk, and the giant cantilevered Chinese fishing nets that have made this stretch of coast one of the most recognised views in Kerala are essentially at the door. The History Restaurant is named with complete sincerity, and earns it. The menu maps the multicultural trading history of this coast w

Redi sits right where Maharashtra runs out and Goa begins, a fishing village of cashew and coconut trees a short drive south of Arambol and Keri Beach, close enough to borrow North Goa's energy without its crowds. Stella Maris takes full advantage of the position: direct beach access, three bedrooms, and a sea-facing yoga pavilion positioned to catch sunrise stretches and sunset drinks from the same spot without anyone having to move. The villa has three bedrooms, and it's all yours. No shared walls, no other guests, no rationing pool time. The elevated sun dining deck turns an ordinary breakfast into the thing you remember the trip by. The pet-friendly policy isn't a token gesture here either – dogs get the run of the beach and a seat at the private cabana dinners SaffronStays sets up right on the sand, under actual stars rather than string lights pretending to be them. What Redi does well and what Stella Maris is well-positioned to enjoy, is the in-between geography. Kayak along the coast in the morning. Walk to Keri Beach or Arambol when you want company; walk back when you don't. Tiracol Fort, perched at the mouth of the Tiracol River, is an easy half-day trip if you can be persuaded off the sand at all. SaffronStays can arrange barbecue nights, a local thali experience and a candlelight dinner for two with prior notice, and outdoor music is permitted within limits during set hours. Time Out tip: Book the beach cabana dinner for your last night. The whole villa can house

On the first floor of an industrial complex on Park Street is a small, windowless, 20-seater bar called In My Room. Sounds pretty awful from that description, except it's anything but.  The bar's owned by chef Auroni Mukherjee, restaurateurs Abhimanyu Maheshwari and Ramesh Kumar Agarwal, with bar expert Pankaj Balachandran behind the cocktail menu. They became pals while working on Conversation Room and Yokocho, but In My Room's markedly different, and much smaller. And while I'm generally not too fond of windowless rooms, this one wins me over with its patterned fabric walls, warm wood interiors, and soft furnishings. Once the door swings shut, the street feels pleasantly far away. The backstory 'For months, I’d been walking past this closed shutter in the alleyway,' says Maheshwari. 'Then one day, it was opened for cleaning, and behind it was this tiny, cosy, tucked-away room. There was something instantly charming about it, and I remember being struck by all the possibilities that such a small space could hold.' On a visit to Calcutta, Balachandran walked into the space with Maheshwari, knelt on the floor and sketched the bar where it would eventually stand. The name arrived later, when Maheshwari heard the Beach Boys’ In My Room while working out one morning. Its suggestion of a private refuge suited the space. 'There’s something incredibly liberating about working with a smaller canvas. You can obsess over the little things without the pressure of filling a large space.

Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary in Assam has over 107 one-horned rhinos in just 38.8 square kilometres. That is the highest density of the species anywhere on the planet. Rhino and River Wildlife Retreat & Spa sits between this sanctuary and the Brahmaputra River, in Mayang, a place with a long oral history of traditional healing and forest knowledge that gives the area a particular quality of stillness. The architecture was commissioned from award-winning designer Aku Zeliang, a native of the northeast, who spent considerable time on site before the first structure was built. The result is a property rooted in its landscape rather than placed on top of it. The sell isn’t just the surroundings, as hard as that may be to believe, but the location at Mayang, 1.5 hours from Guwahati, is not incidental.  Mayang is associated with ancient healing traditions and sits at the confluence of two strong natural forces – the Pobitora sanctuary on one side, and the Brahmaputra on the other. Sunsets over the river here are the kind that stop conversation. Early mornings carry mist, hornbill calls, and the distant sounds of a sanctuary waking up. Why stay at Rhino and River? Pobitora's density means sightings are not a question of luck but of time. The question is of how close and how long. Jeep safaris cover the standard circuits while elephant safaris access the high-grass corridors where rhinos shelter through mid-morning and where jeeps physically cannot go. The retreat's local naturalist,

Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Yavatmal district, Maharashtra, covers 148 square kilometres. That is small by Indian reserve standards, but its tiger density is high enough that sightings on short stays are likely without the vehicle queuing that defines the experience at more prominent parks. There are no convoys of canters orbiting a sleeping cat here. The sanctuary has an unusually intimate character, shaped by four rivers that meander through the forest and by a tiger population whose individual personalities the naturalists at Tipai have spent years learning to read. Tipai is the kind of project that happens when a serious architect, a serious chef, and serious naturalists are all given room to do their best work without compromise.  The villas are designed by Ariane Thakore Ginwala. The kitchen is run by chef Amninder Sandhu and an all-women team. The safaris are led by naturalists who know individual animals by name, behaviour, and territory. Getting here requires a 4-5 hour drive from Nagpur, which is precisely why it stays uncrowded. Why stay at Tipai? The tiger population at Tipeshwar is led by Taalaabwali, the dominant matriarch, regularly spotted near the lake she is named after. Currently with her older daughter Daisy and her latest litter present, there’s a generational grouping that is extremely rare in tiger behaviour documentation. Archie, known for her boldness and maternal instincts, moves through a different part of the sanctuary. Zanjir, the aging domina

Most Indian wildlife lodges are built around a single activity: the jeep safari. Reni Pani Jungle Lodge, set in a natural forest patch adjoining the Satpura Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, is not most Indian wildlife lodges. Satpura is one of very few national parks in India where walking safaris are permitted. And Reni Pani’s naturalists would rather put you on foot, on horseback, or in a boat on the Denwa River, than have you sitting in a queue of jeeps waiting for a tiger to cross the road. The lodge is family-owned and operated by the Jehan Numa Group, a Bhopal-based hospitality family whose third generation Aly Rashid heads the naturalist team. He grew up in Satpura and has spent over seven years studying its wildlife corridors including camera trap research that confirmed a breeding population of leopards, wild dogs, sloth bears, and a young male tiger in the reserve forest outside the park boundary. His colleague Erwin D'Rose spent five years in Kanha studying tiger behaviour before joining Reni Pani, and has worked with multiple wildlife documentary teams. To be utterly clear, these are not briefed guides reading from a laminated card. They know this forest the way most people know their own neighbourhood. The lodge is 150 km from Bhopal, a 3.5-hour drive, and sits in terrain that accurately represents the character of Satpura: teak forest, seasonal nallah, rugged hillocks, and patches of agricultural land that make the surrounding area a genuine wildlife corridor in

Most people who retire from the Indian Administrative Service write their memoirs or take up golf. Teji and Neelu Randhawa chose to open a bed-and-breakfast in their heritage mansion in Hauz Khas Enclave. And they filled it floor-to-ceiling with hand-woven durries, carved wood, traditional textiles, lithographs, and Teji's own photographs, stunning images from decades of travelling India as a civil servant. The result is more or less a privately curated museum that just so happens to serve exceptionally good parathas.  What to expect There are six rooms, each named and decorated around a piece of India's cultural geography: Banni for the Kachchh handicraft traditions of Gujarat; Ajanta, thick with the colours of those ancient Maharashtra cave paintings; Hampi channelling the ruined grandeur of Karnataka; Kama doing something tasteful with the Khajuraho brief; and Neem, which overlooks a park and takes its cue from India's flowering trees. Every room is spacious, every bathroom en-suite and well-appointed, every bed the kind where you have an undignified argument with yourself about leaving. What else to look forward to But the rooms, good as they are, aren't really the point. The point is… Teji. Guests across years of reviews use language that stops just short of proposing marriage to him. He is an encyclopedia of Indian history and culture who will help you plan your itinerary, book trains, arrange drivers, walk you around the neighbourhood, and send you off to the airport w

Most bars are planned, but For The Record managed to stumble into existence. In 2019, architect Buland Shukla's living room in Panjim was where his band came to jam, and the jams slowly turned into listening sessions for friends and family. Drinks showed up next, then food, until the room had quietly become a vinyl bar and restaurant that snuck its way into more bar listings than it had initially ever thought it would. In October 2026, FTR (as it's lovingly abbreviated) relaunched with a renovated space and a new partner: Varakaar Hospitality, the company of Chef Prateek Sadhu and Akshay Tripathi, who also run NAAR, a destination restaurant in the Himalayas. What's worth noticing is what the renovation didn't do. Shukla built much of FTR by hand, piece by piece, as it was needed: a wall, a stand for the records, a bar once the drinks began. The relaunch repaired rather than razed. The courtyard wall stays as it was, the tables are still made of reused old wood, the Cocktail Room's mud walls are left untouched, and the original handbuilt bar top, the vinyl stands and the Vinyl Room's poster wall all remain. The result is a place of several rooms, each with its own mood: the Vinyl Room, the mud-walled Cocktail Room, a courtyard and verandah for warm evenings, and a corner called Off the Record. The new thread running through it all is pottery, at the bar, in the bathroom, in the bar equipment, the cutlery and the plates, much of it from Thomas Potter, the studio next door. Musi

There are few things more persuasive than a beautiful Goan sunset, especially when there's a cocktail in hand and the promise of good seafood on the table. At Lovefools by the Sea, newly opened at the Royal Orchid Beach Resort in Utorda, Chef Sarita Pereira has certainly got the setting right. The bigger question is whether her ambitious interpretation of Goan cuisine can hold its own against the view. LoveFools began in Bombay as an intimate ten-seater dining experience, with a new 12-course menu every weekend. Five years of experimentation eventually led to an à la carte format, complete with a fermentation library producing everything from kombucha to three varieties of miso. Pereira's training in a Michelin-starred kitchen, Can Jubany in Spain, informs her approach to cooking, but Goa is personal. Her heritage, childhood food memories and international influences come together in a menu that travels freely between Goan, Japanese, Spanish and Italian kitchens. When the experiments work, they're excellent. The Mushroom Bebinca – a take on the incredibly fiddly Indo-Portuguese layer cake – is perhaps the best example. Layers of mushrooms, white miso and smoked hiratake create an intensely earthy, almost blue-cheese-like mousse, accompanied by freshly baked focaccia for spreading. It's an unusual, deeply savoury dish that makes a convincing case for the kitchen's fermentation obsession. The Mushroom Xacuti Tart-In, with mushroom ragù and silky xacuti cream tucked into crisp h

Sitting in the middle of Kolkata, it’s perhaps a bit bold to call anything with rice in a bowl a revolutionary do-over. But I shall. Because Amar Khamar is a sourcing brand that simply decided to cook. In a dining landscape currently obsessed with low-ceilinged intimacy, theatrical pour-overs, and tweezers placing micro-greens on tiny plates, this place arrives with a complete lack of fuss.  Founded in 2019 by Sujoy Chatterjee and Sarah Gekeler, Amar Khamar started as a supply chain. They spent years trekking through Bengal’s varied ecoregions, building a network of smallholder farmers, predominantly women, cultivating native heirloom seeds on tiny, rain-fed plots. For years, you bought their handpicked rice varieties, cold-pressed oils, and artisanal jars of aachar off a shelf. Opening a physical dining room was the terrifying next step. The question, of course, was whether a retail brand’s purist philosophy could survive the chaos of ticket times and floor service. The answer is Chhuti-r Bhat (translating to holiday’s rice), an 11-course seasonal thali that you cannot reserve in advance. It is a direct nod to the uncredited, everyday genius of Bengali home cooks, ditching culinary flex for the authority of rare indigenous grains – from the nutty, aromatic narasimha jata aatap to the slender siddho rani akanda. The progression is effortless. Upfront comes a comforting and bitter shukto (either traditional or offset with tender Rohu) that clears the palate. It is instantly ma

In some alternative universe, there's a version of this bar that could have been a gimmick. It’s a nautical-themed rum bar in a sleepy fishing village after all, complete with a treasure-hunt-style map and striped wallpaper. In this universe, Bar Outrigger is one of the most talked-about bars in the country.  Set right on the water in Dona Paula, it’s climbed fast through India's serious bar rankings on the strength of a deeply thought-through rum programme and a total commitment to its own theatrical bit. The setting does a lot of the early work: a cosy, comfortable room by the Dona Paula jetty, decorated with model boats, striped fabric, worn wood. The view at sunset is breathtaking, almost as if you’re at sea. The communal table at its centre is the heart of the place, a deliberate nod to seafaring camaraderie that gets strangers talking within a round or two. But the reason bartenders and cocktail lovers keep returning to Bar Outrigger is what's actually in the glass: a menu built entirely around rum, ranging from age-old classics to genuine curveballs like the Tiki Negroni and a drink simply called Walking Dead. Rum-tasting flights let you go deeper if a single cocktail doesn't cut it, working through the spirit's range from light and grassy to dark and funky. Food, from the kitchen, leans into fresh seafood and Goan home cooking. It's a smart pairing with the rum-forward drinks list: nothing on the food side competes for attention, but it does ground the night. And then