I pick up the Raj Palace dining menu. It announces the ‘Maharaja’s Special Health Portion: an age-old secret recipe of the royal doctor created specially for the Maharaja, served in a gold and silver bowl covered with a layer of edible gold leaf.
I watch the redecoration going on for a new suite in the hotel. A few artisans are busy working the walls, sticking thin wisps of gold leaf onto patterns drawn on the wall.
I climb the stairs to see the proud Durbar Suite, “acknowledged as Asia’s Leading Suite by World Travel Awards for 2008” and, of course, there’s more gold. But you can’t begin to imagine how much more. A twin bed, a sofa set, a chest of drawers, chairs, table, dressing table, and more — all are plated with gold.
Overwhelmed, I come down to recover in what eventually becomes my favourite haunt in this 300-year-old, renovated, opulent, opulent, opulent haveli in Jaipur: the verandah called Diwan-e-Aam and now the main sitting lounge of the hotel. As I sit, a row of monkeys walks on the edge of a parapet, a young one on its mother’s back occasionally bouncing up to see beyond the wall. Birds hover in and out of the two neem trees and a restful breeze carries dark clouds from the northeast. But my mind is still reeling from the gold. But there is much else besides gold as far as glitter goes. There is silver, precious stones, expensive glasswork, carpets, paintings, chandeliers and shining marble all over the place, but it’s the gold that I need to figure out.
Raj Palace was built as Chomu Haveli in 1727 by the then Prime Minister of the state, right when the city of Jaipur was being created. The haveli was born in an era when the world moved to the rhythms of long-distance trade, goods from various continents were shipped over large oceanic currents to other continents. Among the world’s warehouses, ports and merchants, the land called Hindostan was known for its hunger for gold and silver. If there is any truth in the wistful title ‘sone ki chidiya’ for India, it resides in this bottomless appetite for precious metals that the land has always had; even now about one-quarter of the world’s gold production finds its way here. Much of the charismatic metal was bought as jewellery or hoarded by ordinary folk, but a good slice was used by the royals to bolster their status, ego and even health, as is evident from the ingredients of the ‘Maharaja’s Special Health Portion’.
The haveli was built by the ‘Thakur Sahibs’ of Chomu or Chaumoo, a fiefdom not far from then-capital Amer. Descended from the rulers of Amer, theirs was an important clan among the Kachhwaha Rajputs. The haveli was their residence in the new capital of Jaipur, and remained so into the middle of the 20th century. It is still owned by a branch of the same family, but only in 1996 did the haveli succumb to the inevitable fate of the royal houses of Rajasthan when its owners decided to convert it into a heritage hotel (which opened last year).
The restored haveli maintains most of the architectural features that place it in 18th-century Rajasthan. The thick walls that keep summer temperatures out remain as does the network of small windows with their jharokhas to catch the air currents. The passageways, courtyards and gardens make for an intricate mesh and lend a sense of intrigue that is always attached to palaces. There are many reasons put forth to explain the complexity of architecture, the chief being a need for easy and sometimes clandestine access to the zenana as well as for secret getaways. For me, it’s the wonderful fun of getting lost in these maze-like mansions that seems the main rationale for these creations. Guests usually stay and leave without knowing exactly where their rooms were; room numbers give no clue. It took me more than a day’s determined wandering to figure out the pathways.
The haveli is structured around two gardens in the front and back, and a central courtyard called Chandni Chowk. The front courtyard is called the Charbagh and has a Mughal touch to it, with its square design surrounded by arched corridors, lawns around a stone platform in the centre. Maharani Bagh is the garden at the back with a small swimming pool at the far corner. It is completely enclosed, and was once completely out of bounds to men.
“Everything is a challenge in restoration, and it can’t be done only with money,” says Arun Puri, who came to own this old house by marrying into the royal family. However, it does require a good deal of money to get the entire edifice back on its feet to serve a different purpose. The toughest part was to get the new services in place — air-conditioning ducts, water pipes, cables — without compromising the walls that were meant to be fortifications and are four or even five feet thick. This led to a search for specialised architectural skill in India, UK and Germany, and finally to the development of in-house expertise. Another problem was to find colours made of vegetable and stone dyes, used in the haveli’s original design. These shades are irreplaceable in their richness and last decades longer than modern paints. Old artisans were found, who trained more men, and finally a team of 200 crafted the greens, blues and yellows, and the gold and silver foiling that are to be seen on the walls today.
The idea behind Raj Palace is not only to preserve heritage, but also to provide luxury, the finest and the latest amenities. The hotel is proud, even boastful, of the quality it offers: the service is excellent, mattresses are made of a new anti-bacterial material, showers have a temperature memory (the shower actually remembers what temperature you managed to arrive at in your previous ‘Bathing Experience’ after you’ve done much fiddling and testing and turning of the hot-and-cold knobs, and will pour forth the water to your satisfaction next time)… What this means is that the oldest address in town now houses the newest contraptions. It is indeed a unique combination; they know it and, of course, make you pay for it.
Museum suites — hotel suites that are literally museums — are the speciality of Raj Palace. The most magnificent of these is the Durbar Suite, which was the sleeping chamber of the Thakurs; it combines a high-ceilinged reception room with two bedrooms. Here you can live with artefacts and effects from the 18th and 19th centuries, otherwise seen only in museums. You sleep on a 100-year-old double bed made of silver, resplendent with the emblem of Chomu — a sun and two swords flanked by two horses. You sip your morning tea under Belgian-glass chandeliers, reclining on a gold-plated chaise longue and admire the contours of a dancing girl cast in silver. You while away your empty afternoons (royal afternoons are correctly empty) gazing at the stones of Nahargarh Fort on the far hill, through a golden telescope, planning a raid on the citadel.
To enjoy the privileges of the Durbar Suite, guests pay an incredible Rs 2 lakh a night. But to prove that nothing exceeds like excess, early next year the hotel will unveil an apartment that will luxuriate in the tag of the ‘most expensive hotel suite in the world’. The five-storey accommodation, called the Shahi Mahal Suite, is quoted at Rs 16 lakh per night (available for a minimum of two nights)!
The food I gently digest while surveying this kingdom of gold varies between good and excellent. Most of the eating and drinking happens around the forecourt. The room service menu is severely limited, devoid of all dishes with curries and sauces, which can spoil the expensive old carpets adorning the rooms. The main dining hall, Swapna Mahal, is a shining presence with its massive central chandelier, mirrors and stained-glass windows. The breakfast could be a Continental buffet spread along with some idli-vada-sambar, but if you wake up feeling expansive a ‘champagne-breakfast’ is available. Lunch and dinner can vary from a simple soup (my coriander-lemon soup was superb and subtle) with buttered veggies to a spectacular Raj Palace Royal Thali. The menu is loaded with regal lamb dishes (à la ‘maas raj gharane ka’) but also has caviar and smoked salmon. Shikarbadi, the bar, is well stocked with expensive wines, liqueurs and single malts but also offers cheaper alcohol, cocktails and beers for the hoi polloi.
You can create the most luxurious hotel in the world but you do need the elements on your side. I reached Raj Palace on a sunny afternoon, with the sun bright enough to beat the royal façade into a bit of a flat monotone and drive me indoors into the air-conditioning. I returned with memories of a haveli contemplative and mellow under thick black clouds. The rain gave a new lustre to cream walls, the muted light created more planes and shadows, the beautiful jharokhas shed droplets of grace. Eventually, cool winds and moonlight added a magic of their own. And yet it got better, when the musician playing on his 16-stringed ravanhatta slipped into Rajasthan’s haunting, now-anthemic kesariya balama…
The information
Getting there
By Air: Nearly all airlines fly to Jaipur’s Sanganer Airport.
By Rail: From Delhi the best option is the Ajmer Shatabdi (l AIR eaves New Delhi 6.05am; arrives 10.45am)
By Road: NH8, which connects Delhi and Jaipur, is a good but busy route. The 260km journey should take you about 5hr.
The Raj Palace is 12km from the airport, and 6km from the railway station.
The hotel
The Raj Palace is a member of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World, and was voted the world’s leading heritage hotel by the World Travel Awards for 2007. The hotel has 29 suites and 38 rooms, and is wheel-chair friendly.
Tariff: Rs 15,000 to Rs 2 lakh. Meals: Breakfast: Rs 800, High Tea: Rs 1,000, Lunch: Rs 1,000, Dinner: Rs 1,200, Kebab Dinner: Rs 2,000, Maharani Thali: Rs 2,400. The restaurants are also open to non-resident guests. Location: Zorawar Singh Gate, Amer Road, Jaipur. Contact 0141-2634077, www.rajpalace.com