RAAS Jodhpur

Mehrangarh Fort looms over most of the rooms at RAAS, and the hotel leaves each guest to decide how much of it to look at. Across the front of each of the 36 rooms in the newer buildings is a jaali, the stone lattice of traditional Rajasthani building, there for shade and privacy, and it folds away. The three older buildings are seventeenth and eighteenth century, in the city's rose-red sandstone, restored in lime mortar and the same stone; they hold the spa and three Heritage Suites, round a courtyard with the pool between them. Studio Lotus and Praxis built the new wings around them in 2010, with more than a hundred regional artisans. The baths are cast iron and the sun heats the water, the one thing at RAAS nobody had to restore.

Recommended for couples who want the old city at the gate and the fort in the window, and for families with children old enough to be trusted around steps and unfenced ponds. The lanes outside are too narrow for a car, so the hotel keeps its own tuk-tuks, though the Clock Tower market, for bangles and spices, is 500 metres off and the fort about fifteen minutes on foot. Children can have treasure hunts and cookery lessons arranged, and the 18-metre heated pool has a shallow ledge for the smaller ones. At least one dinner should be at Darikhana, by candlelight, looking straight up at Mehrangarh. The stepwell was submerged for more than a century before the hotel spent three years restoring it. It now has a cafe beside it, which seems the least it was owed.