The Viceroy's House (Rashtrapati Bhavan), by E. L. Lutyens: Part I The Viceroy's House (Rashtrapati Bhavan), by E. L. Lutyens: Part I Jacqueline Banerjee , Associate Editor, the Victorian Web Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Architecture —> Architecture in Colonial India —> E. L. Lutyens —> Next ] Photographs by the present author, except where otherwise stated. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.] Exterior Viceroy's House, now Rashtrapati Bhavan (Hindi for "President's House"), Raisina Hill, New Delhi, India; three-quarter view of the main east front. 1921-27 (Ching et al.

709), but its architect Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944) began designing it in 1912 ("Chronology"), and the Viceroy and Lady Irwin finally moved in on 23 December 1929 ("New Delhi"). This is far outside our website's chronological remit, yet the Viceroy's House was in many ways the high point of Lutyens' brilliant career as an architect, and the fulfilment of the long quest for a synthesis of Western and Eastern architectural styles, both of which had developed during the Victorian period. Controversy arises largely over its expression of imperial resolve, and this too was a culmination of changes in attitude that had evolved during the previous century. Painting in the vestibule of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, showing the whole main (east) front. Certain points are beyond contention. By far the most important residence that Lutyens ever designed, this is also the grandest of all the residences that the British built in India, a fitting successor to the original grand colonial palace of the Raj, Charles Wyatt's Raj Bhavan in Kolkata.

Described as "the largest of all modern palaces, 600 feet long from end to end, 180 feet to the top of its central dome," Lutyens' new headquarters for a brand new capital had 340 rooms, covered four and a half acres and included twelve separate internal courtyards, making it "probably the last of the great royal palaces of history" (Morris 77). Rising above the executive and legislative offices of the state, and overlooking the city itself, this made a clear statement of British imperial intentions. The position of the site seems acceptable enough to some. One commentator writes, "whether accidentally or by design, Lutyens created the new capital in the exact shape of the traditional Vastu Purusha [the god of construction, whose supine form determines the best metaphysical plan of a building site], whose head is on Raisina Hill and whose feet rest at the Purana Quila [the oldest fort in Delhi]" (Buch 30).

In fact, Lutyens' colleague Herbert Baker (1862-1946; later Sir Herbert Baker) explained later that the site was chosen after considerable deliberation, not precisely with this auspicious plan in mind, but taking into account the "road system based on two great roads" (Baker 776). However, to others the siting is "an act of imperial cartography" (Sharma 30), Raisina Hill being somewhat out on a limb, looking down from a height on, and separated from, the shambolic mass of the inhabitants of the older city. Central Vista (Rajpath). This two-mile long Central Vista links the Viceroy's Palace to the Memorial Arch . Around it were constructed the official buildings as well as the residences of Princely Rulers from the different Indian States. Photograph and caption: Medha Malik Kudaisya. [Note the dome of the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the middle distance.] In point of fact, Lutyens was upset to find that the steep rise towards it, between his colleague Sir Herbert Baker's Secretariat buildings, prevented it from being seen from a distance in almost any of its glory.

Only the dome and its drum are visible from lower down the rise, something that Philip Davies considers "a conceptual error" (231). Lutyens' battle to put this right by excavating the hillside proved unavailing, and Davies ascribes the unsatisfactory result to a failure of collaboration between these two giants of contemporary architecture: Baker had been the greatest force in South African architecture for the twenty years preceding this collaboration. It could not have been an easy working partnership. Questions also arise in connection with the building materials. The main ones are utterly appropriate in local terms: "the same red sandstone that the Moghuls had used at Fatehpur Sikr [the ancient fortified city close to Agra] interspersed with cream stone from Dholpur, Bharatpur and Agra, in brilliant horizontal bands of colour accentuating the horizontal emphasis of the whole edifice" (Davies 229).

Yet the whole ensemble is read critically by some (not necessarily Indians) because the sandstone was reinforced by the fruits of British industry — iron, steel and concrete — and could thus be seen as "the utlimate ossification of the provisional 'scaffolding' with which the colonial polity had been assembled." Going further, the same critic infers: "What remained of the aborted project of colonial social engineering was only the hollow facade of imperial authority and system, propped up by the skeletal cage of its own technical superstructure" (Scriver 73). Left: Closer view of the frontage, with ceremonial cannons, from the south. Right: Entrance portico at the top of the sweeping stone steps, with the central dome above. However, the structure is "redeemed," as the current President's official website puts it, by its many Indian features. Lutyens professed no fondness at all for Indian touches on western architecture. Indeed, he disliked the idea of an "'orientalised' classicism"; but, after all, he had to reach a compromise on this (see Metcalf 234). He did so with remarkable success.

The most important feature of all is the raised copper-clad central dome. Octagonal turrets encircle a pierced stone drum, which is capped with a vast hemispherical dome. This might look classical or even Byzantine , and Lutyens himself never admitted that it had an Indian source. But is widely accepted as having been modelled on the great third-century Buddhist Stupa at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, built by the Emperor Ashoka. The stupa was being restored under the British at just this time (1912-19). For Lutyens, suggests Thomas Metcalf, such a source "provided a way of evading the communal tangle of Hindu and Muslim" (An Imperial Vision, 238). Left: Close view of the top of the colonnade. Right: The north-east wing, showing the intermittent colonnading that produces loggias. Similarly, the capitals might look like Corinthian ones from a distance, but are carved with acanthus leaves and small hanging Indian bells, like temple bells, one at each corner: Davies calls this "the Delhi order" (228).

Above the colonnade is the chuja, a deep cornice or projecting stone shade, as used by the Moghuls to protect against sun and the monsoon. This is attractively picked out in red, in an Indian design, on the visible underside. The north-east wing shows not only the loggias that shade the windows and doors, but, at the turning point (on the left side of the photograph), adjacent chattris or canopied structures on the roofline, a feature of Rajasthani architecture. On the roof at the end of the wing is another of the larger stone-basin fountains that enliven the roofline. According to the floor plan (see Morris 79), this wing was mainly for clerks, with other rooms marked out for the cashier, stationery etc. One of the least welcome British legacies to India was an addiction to red tape. Perspective View of the South Elevation of the Viceroy's House (now known as Rashtrapati Bhavan), New Delhi, India." By Lutyens' and Baker's artist, the perspectivist William Walcot (1874-1943), 1914.

Courtesy of the WolfsonianFIU (see bibliography). Details Left to right: (a) and (b) An arched passageway within the complex. Jan Morris writes of the "endless arched corridors" which "seemed to run through the house like sumptuous warrens" (81). (c) One of the jaalis, or pierced stone lattice screens (see Metcalf, An Imperial Vision, 284) that let in the air while providing shade from the sunlight, and shelter from rain. Of Lutyens' earlier domestic architecture, Sir Lawrence Weaver (1876-1930), architectural editor of Country Life, wrote in 1921: "We come continually on little conceits which relieve the prevailing and even sometimes austere simplicity" (24). That is certainly true here, from the "Delhi capitals" and roofline chattris to the pierced stone jaalis (seen above and below, on the right) — and to various aspects of the interior as well.

This is even more impressive than the exterior, with a grand circular marble-columned Durbar Hall at its heart, behind the entrance portico and beneath the dome; three state drawing rooms behind that; and a dining room and ballroom looking onto the beautiful Moghul gardens at the back. There are, of course, a variety of other state rooms, offices and guest rooms, though, according to the Times write-up on the first day of their residence, the Viceroy and his wife's quarters were themselves "as simple as the State rooms are magnificent" (14). Indian features here range from the structural, such as the open staircases, verandahs and internal courtyards, to motifs like the Star of India in the State Dining Room. Another jaali along a stairwell. These are varied in pattern, some being floral and perhaps more western in that respect. Few would dispute that, in sum, the Rashtrapati Bhavan is "architecture in excelsis" (Davies 228), and the official and generally unofficial word is that its many Indian references make it a source of pride even to an independent India.

Yet Lutyens' successful melding of East and West is still not exempt from criticism in this postcolonial age. Such amalgams, suggests Metcalf, "asserted a claim to knowledge, and hence to power. Britain not only ruled, as the Romans had done, but had mastered the Orient" ("Architecture and the Representation of Empire," 62) — or thought it had. Related Material Pedestal and surround for Jagger's George V (originally near the War Memorial References Baker, Herbert. "The New Delhi." Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. Vol. 74, No. 3841 (2 July 1926): 773-793 (accessed via JSTOR). Buch, M. N. "Lutyen's New Delhi: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow." Indian International centre Quarterly. Vol. 30, No. 2 (Monsoon 2003). 29-40 (accessed via JSTOR). Ching, Francis D. K., Mark M. Jarzonbek, and Vikramaditya Prakash. A Global History of Architecture. 2nd ed.

Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Davies, Philip. Splendours of the Raj: British Architecture in India 1660-1947. London: Penguin, 1987. Chronology The Lutyens Trust. Web. 2 March 2014. Metcalf, Thomas R. An Imperial Vision: India's Architecture and Britain's Raj. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. (This has a handy glossary.) _____. "Architecture and the Representation of Empire: India, 1860-1910." Representations. No. 6 (Spring 1984): 37-65. Morris, Jan, with Simon Winchester. Stones of Empire: The buildings of the Raj. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. "New Delhi: The Splendours of the Viceroy's House." The Times.23 December 1929: 14. Times Digital Archive. Web. 2 March 2014.

"Perspective View of the South Elevation of the Viceroy's House (now known as Rashtrapati Bhavan), New Delhi, India." The Wolfsonian—Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection. URL: TD1992.165.1.JPG. Web. 2 March 2014. "Rashtrapati Bhavan." The President's Secretariat. Web. 2 March 2014. Scriver, Peter. "Empire-Building and Thinking in the Public Works Department of British India." In Colonial Modernities: Building , Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon. Eds. Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2007. 69-92. Sharma, Satish. "Imperial Delhi: Imagined, Imaged, Iconized." Indian International Centre Quarterly. Vol. 33, No. 2 (Autumn 2006): 27-32 (accessed via JSTOR). Weaver, Lawrence. Lutyens Houses and Gardens .

London: Offices of Country Life, and George Newnes / New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921. Internet Archive. Web. 2 March 2014. India in One, Two or Three Weeks - The New York Times The New York Times Travel |India in One, Two or Three Weeks Search Continue reading the main story Photo Amber Fort, a hilltop redoubt outside Jaipur best reached by elephant back, is notable for interiors that feature the latest technological innovations of earlier ages and views of the Aravalli range. Credit Car Culture/Corbis THE connection between travel and a Coco Chanel dictum may not be that obvious. The French designer once purportedly said that a woman should stop before leaving the house, gaze in the mirror and then remove one piece of jewelry. The operative principle was to simplify. In travel it is seldom acknowledged how routinely people pile on excess. And while this may not hold true on cruises or Club Med, where the biggest daily challenge is finding the proper level of SPF, among independent travelers the tendency is to take on countries, regions, continents, galaxies. From the placid vantage of a laptop, the world looks manageable.

In real time, the degree of travel difficulty unfolds in agonizing increments. Did I really think I could fit all that into a week? I did. Across almost three decades of travel I’ve often noted the general custom; I’ve inflicted it on myself. And it occurs to me that in few other places are Chanel’s words of advice better applied than India , a country my passports inform me I have visited more than 20 times. Assuming, perhaps, that the first trip to that compelling and bewildering country will be their only one, friends cram itineraries full to the point where misery is a guarantee. Thus my advice to pals heading to South Asia is to appraise the itinerary with a ruthless eye and then, long before heading to the airport, strike something off. Continue reading the main story First-timers to India tend to be guided unvaryingly (and sensibly) around the so-called Golden Triangle (Delhi/Agra/Jaipur). This route, straightforward enough on paper, requires some discernment to get right. A policy of less is more is always sensible in India, in order to limit the shock the place inevitably delivers to an average Westerner’s system.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story A question often posed is whether a week is enough time to cover the birthplace of three great faiths — Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The answer, reasonably, is no. But travelers are not reasonable people, and it is distinctly possible to absorb the essence of India in CliffsNotes form. The One-Week Trip It is useful to start in the capital. A city created, like great geological formations, of time-sculptured and overlapping strata, Delhi is seven cities at least and almost as many civilizations collapsed, accreted and jumbled into one. Despite its shambolic beginnings and ambient tumult, Delhi is a pleasing city to visit, in part because it retains swaths of forest greenbelt — its broad avenues, its traffic roundabouts and other useful systems bequeathed by the imperial nannies of the British Raj. Compared with the horn-honking frenzy of industrial tech centers elsewhere in the country, Delhi remains notably civilized. It is, as is often noted, Washington, D.C., to Mumbai’s New York.

START IN DELHI A week in India, I tell friends, axiomatically begins with two days in the capital (for simplicity’s sake I am referring to time spent in-country; nearly a full day is lost traveling to India from the East Coast of the United States). And, if budget permits, I advise them to book into one of the city’s fine, though pricey top-tier hotels. There is a reason for this. Delhi is ever sprawling, and the premium you pay at hotels like the Taj Mahal or the Oberoi for a central location and for “amenities” like potable tap water (even ice is safe in such places these days), knowledgeable concierges, well-trained staff and, yes, consistent electrical service is repaid a thousandfold by reduced time in traffic and a placid digestive tract. Because I believe that denial is the only plausible treatment for jet lag, after the usual 1 a.m. arrival and witching-hour check-in, I tend to sleep what few hours remain before dawn, setting the alarm for breakfast so that I can launch myself into the first day. Some intrepid types navigate the city on the newly extended and, from all accounts, efficient Metro.

In the interest of time-saving, I just flag down a cab at the hotel taxi rank. In most Indian cities the beloved Hindustan Ambassador taxi, its buglike design little altered since 1958, has begun to vanish, replaced by more modern vehicles. In Delhi, though, the Ambassador remains a reassuringly constant presence. No less comforting is the off-meter flat rate many drivers remain willing to accept. While this rate is subject to change at any time, in my experience it has held surprisingly steady for more than a decade: 1,000 rupees (or about $21 at current exchange rates) hires a car for 50 miles or eight hours. While every guidebook instructs visitors to start out by seeing the lanes of Old Delhi, the Mughal sites like the Red Fort and the colossal mosque known as Jama Masjid , I gave up on the noise and crowds and filth of Old Delhi long ago.

I advise friends to save their awe instead for the next phase of the journey, for Agra and the Taj Mahal, for Emperor Akbar’s little-visited tomb at nearby Sikandra , and for Fatehpur Sikri , the evanescent red sandstone city that lies about 20 miles down the road from the great and, in my impious view, overrated shrine to love. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back in the capital on one’s first day in the country, I recommend bypassing the old city to have a driver convey one instead in early morning to Rashtrapati Bhavan , now the presidential residence, though built for the British viceroy and thus a cornerstone of Sir Edwin Lutyens’s New Delhi and symbolic centerpiece of the British Raj. Heightened security has made it difficult to experience this complex of government buildings except at some distance or through gates. So I tend to have the car park on a side road while I stroll the broad Rajpath, which leads downhill from Raisina Hill to India Gate.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story Few remnants of the colonial presence in India survive as nearly intact as does Rashtrapati Bhavan; fewer still evince comparable architectural modesty — a notable feature for an array of buildings designed to express imperial might. This may be the place to note the presence of animals in urban Indian settings, the cows that still turn up on New Delhi medians despite laws that ban their presence; the white stallions trotting through traffic on the way to a wedding ceremony; the goat flocks being herded along the four-lane blacktop in Tamil Nadu. At Rashtrapati Bhavan, the wildlife takes the form of impertinent monkeys that fling themselves across the facades of the red sandstone pavilions, tails looping from domed chhatris, prehensile thumbs hitched on to crevices of pierced-sandstone jali screens as they nonchalantly delouse themselves. From Raisina Hill and the presidential residence, I typically have my taxi drive on to the National Museum , whose survey collection provides a fine grounding for visitors in need of a playbook to India’s cultural and religious multiplicities.

After this, I have a late lunch at one of several downtown outposts of a restaurant called Nathu’s Sweets , a Delhi institution noted for its Bengali home-cooking and unctuous desserts. The Nathu’s branch I frequent occupies a corner of the antiques enclave called Sunder Nagar Market, and thus is convenient for a leisurely afternoon tour through the Aladdin’s-cave-like emporiums there, places like Ladakh Art Gallery or Bharany’s , a shop whose presiding, though occasionally absent spirit is C. L. Bharany, a wizened ancient with a sharp sense of business and an expansive philosophy of life. That’s plenty for one day, especially on little sleep: head back to your hotel, I tell friends. Order a club sandwich and watermelon juice and sack out. On Day 2, I tend to set out early for South Delhi and for the austere and distinctly phallic minaret at Qutb Minar, or else spend time at the seldom-visited Sikh Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, or at an obscure ruins near the woodlands of Mehrauli known as Jamali Kamali Masjid.

Few locals even know of this mosque complex named for a Sufi saint interred beside his male lover. I’d never heard of it before being taken there by Bim Bissell, the irrepressible matriarch of the family behind the Indian handicrafts emporium chain Fabindia . On our visit, Bim mentioned to me offhandedly that when her children were young, the family customarily packed food for al fresco meals at Jamali Kamali. It seemed somehow characteristic of both Bim and her city that it was a natural thing to picnic with your children at a tomb. Advertisement Continue reading the main story After my morning outings, I tend to make my way to Basil and Thyme for lunch. This simple and surprisingly inexpensive cafe is in a bungalow in Santushti Shopping Complex, itself set behind the walls of New Wellington Camp, Air Force Station, a shopping complex much favored by Delhi’s retail-mad leisure class. Here, the chef, Bhicoo J. Manekshaw — now closing in on 90 and retired from the stove — continues to devise menus offering fresh, unfussy fare best categorized under the rubric of what was once called “butler food” in India.

Over lunch of cold-poached salmon or roast chicken with black mushroom stuffing, washed down with fresh lime soda, it is easy to forget that outside Santushti’s gated walls is a tumultuous city of 14 million and that one is not just passing time before catching the 5:05 to Cos Cob. After lunch I poke around at Santushti, stopping in at Anokhi to see the new offerings produced by this Jaipur-based company specializing in hand-block printed fabrics, and at Tulsi , the small shop run by the designer Neeru Kumar. From there I move on by taxi to Baba Kharak Singh Marg, an avenue that juts like a radial spoke from the central roundabout of Connaught Circus. Baba Kharak Singh Marg is among the last remaining streets in India where it is possible to find an array of government-sponsored emporiums, places that, in a drowsy and state-subsidized way, promote the specialist crafts that are fast disappearing from the Indian scene.

From Andhra Pradesh comes iron and silver filigree work called Bidriware; from Orissa, paintings on palm fiber; from Rajasthan, white-on-white patchwork appliqué; from Assam, the naturally golden silk called muga; from Kashmir, the lacquerware that is pretty inescapable in India or, for that matter, at ABC Carpet & Home. If fatigue threatens, this experience can be condensed by stopping in at Kamala , a well curated omnibus crafts shop run by the Crafts Council of India, at the end of the state shop parade. (Of course, if one happens to be in Delhi on a weekend, it is worth ditching the country club lunch at Santushti to splash out on the buffet at the Threesixty restaurant in the Oberoi hotel. The most steroidal bar mitzvah feast has nothing on the Oberoi’s buffet, a prime example of the notion that in India too much is hardly ever enough — although, of course, for much of the population too little is a grim and permanent condition.) Fortified by lunch, and as a preparation for the journey to Agra, I urge friends to head straight for Humayun’s Tomb .

For decades this monument was a travesty — its fountains and watercourses barren, its lawns moth-eaten, its ancient palisades in peril of imminent collapse. Wasps had built vast bulbous nests in the pointed Mughal archways; shanty dwellers had built their own improvised nests in crevices of the monument walls. Though evocative in decay, Humayun’s Tomb is no less so today, restored with funds from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture , and in all of Delhi or even of India, there can be few places lovelier than Humayun’s Tomb at sunset, when the waning light of day outlines the tiled dome and eagles hang in the thermals above the nearby Yamuna River. Advertisement Continue reading the main story ON TO THE TAJ MAHAL From Delhi, I typically hire a car and driver through the hotel travel desk and head to Agra. And while I would prefer not to spend a night in this shamefully polluted city, this is the only proper way to visit the Taj Mahal.

What I mean is that the Taj Mahal seen in the glaring sun of an Indian midday, as happens when you reach it after arriving from Delhi, can seem as ghostly blank as an overexposed photo. Seen at dusk or dawn, however, the structure’s marmoreal surface magically absorbs and reflects the ambient colors of sky and clouds and even a hint of the orangy pollution belched out by nearby industries. Upon arrival at Agra on one’s third day in India and having risen to see the great monument near dawn, it is usual to press on to Jaipur on a route that takes you first to Fatehpur Sikri, among the most evocative ruins in India. Unlike the Taj Mahal, which impresses but rarely moves me, this city abandoned in the 16th century is a deeply atmospheric place, rising as it does from farm fields in the middle of seemingly nowhere. A complex of meeting halls, women’s quarters, courtyard gardens and stables for elephants, Fatehpur Sikri was occupied for a mere 14 years before a shortage of water forced its abandonment. Like all lost cities, it is a screen onto which one is free to project any narrative of your choosing.

It is a poetic place, as even the wild parrots scribbling their vivid green arabesques above the old minarets seem to know. From there I continue on to Jaipur, the fabled Pink City, which is, by Indian standards, not that old (17th century) and by any reasonable estimate, not so roseate, either. Still, Jaipur must be seen for at least three reasons: the City Palace ; a hilltop redoubt outside town called Amber (pronounced Amer) Fort; and Gem Palace , which is not a palace at all. Even an hourlong tour of City Palace, a multistory ancestral home of the high-living Anglophile Maharajahs of Jaipur, provides a tantalizing peek into the voluptuary lives of the acquisitive royals, who collected miniatures by the yard, silver by the ton, carpets seemingly by the mile. At Amber Fort, the ruling Kachhawa clan lived and ruled from a hilltop redoubt of red sandstone and white marble, where the fused influences of Hindu and Muslim architecture are only part of the pleasure of place.

The fort is best reached on elephant back (a bit of tourist hokum that is well worth it) and is notable both for interiors that feature the latest technological innovations of earlier ages — cascading water running down marble ramps provided an early form of air-conditioning — and views of the barren Aravalli range. It makes sense to save Gem Palace for last because it is the sort of place that yields up its secrets slowly. Chambers filled with cases of jewels and silver lead into each other, and serious shoppers will often find a member of the Kasliwal family — which has run the place for generations — beckoning them into a back room for glimpses of treasures not kept on public view. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Gem Palace is one of those purveyors passed around like a secret among cognoscenti, though realistically it’s not much of a secret. Eventually everyone from the philanthropist Anne Bass to Giorgio Armani to Aunt Tillie has wandered in at some point. The greater challenge is getting out without losing your shirt. That then is the one-week plan.

You might return to New Delhi and fly home, or else stay on and — doubling the available time — use this same basic format for an itinerary easily expanded to encompass places a bit farther afield. The following itineraries can be managed in chunks of two to three days and accordingly the first stop after Jaipur is Jodhpur, my favorite among the cities of Rajasthan. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Two Weeks is Better DIVE INTO RAJASTHAN Jodhpur, like the other cities noted below, can probably be adequately enjoyed in two days and is an easy hop by plane from Jaipur via Delhi or Mumbai and an easy place, as well, in which to find hotels at every price. I have tested them all, from the funky stucco pavilions of Ajit Bhawan to the businesslike Hari Mahal . There is, though, only one ideal place to lay one’s head in this desert outpost, and that is the Indo-Saracenic pile called Umaid Bhawan Palace.

Last of the mega-palaces built over a century-long building spree by Indian maharajahs, Umaid Bhawan is sometimes likened to a Victorian railway station and invariably said to have been built as a charitable work-relief program for a region beset by a prolonged and killing drought. Believe what you like, the place can be reliably said to belong to its resident owner, the Oxford-educated Gaj Singh II, 64, the Maharajah of Jodhpur, who inherited the immense pile at age 4. A vast and haunting palace, replete with Bohemian chandeliers, gilt tête-à-têtes and taxidermied trophies bagged during ancient shikars, Umaid Bhawan sits atop a low hill and overlooks another of Gaj Singh’s properties, the great citadel of Mehrangarh Fort. Umaid Bhawan is now operated in partnership with Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces, and it must be said that a certain amount of its quiddity was lost in hotel-chain translation.

Still, the palace retains its time-stopped aura and, perhaps alone among the great Rajasthan palaces, easily conjures an era when palace ladies led segregated, gossipy lives in the secluded zenana, when the gallants of the legendary Jodhpur polo teams played fierce chukkers and returned to drink stiff whiskies in a bar where, to this day, a stuffed black bear stands upright with a drinks tray balanced in its paws. A visit to Jodhpur logically starts with a trip to the hilltop citadel of Mehrangarh Fort, where, up a series of ramps and past the studded elephant gates is a historical fortress museum almost without parallel in India. Gaj Singh II was an early adopter of Western-style curatorial practices, a welcome anomaly in a country so stuffed with antiquities that treasures are often carelessly left by their owners to be devoured by white ants or to rot in the dust. The Mehrangarh collection includes silver elephant howdahs, Jodhpur school miniatures, arms and armor, and textiles.

The fort itself, though massive, stupendous and ominous when seen from afar, is surprisingly intimate and homey within: a series of mirrored chambers of pleasure and rest. From the sinuous ramparts of Mehrangarh there are fine, expansive views of the surrounding Thar Desert and — barnacled to the flanks of the fortress — the traditional houses of the city’s Brahmins, all painted Krishna blue. Advertisement Continue reading the main story TAKE A DRIVE TO UDAIPUR From Jodhpur I go on to Udaipur, again booking a driver and car for a road trip that Google Maps pegs at precisely five hours and 20 minutes. At a guess, the geniuses at Google Maps have never actually seen an Indian road. I myself find a useful rule of thumb when in India to double the estimated road time and average things out. Winding slowly uphill through sere desert and a region inhabited by a pacifist tribe called the Bhils, the drive from Jodhpur eventually crests the Aravallis before descending into a startlingly verdant landscape of cultivated fields.

Only by traveling overland are you able to visit the Jain Adinatha Temple at Ranakpur , an ineffable monument of marble whose hall contains either hundreds or thousands of intricately carved columns, depending upon whom you ask. It is an austere place, one whose ecstatic carvings create an atmosphere of quietly humming spiritual intensity, something like a fission lab for souls. A fine (and, essentially, the only) stopping-off point at Ranakpur is Maharani Bagh Orchard Retreat, a former country house still in the family of the Maharajah of Jodhpur. Set amid gardens and fruit groves, the hotel is right off a main artery where, come evening, one can watch the traffic of barefoot pilgrims heading toward the temple as red-turbaned Rabari tribesmen head the opposite way with their herds of sheep or goats. The end point of this particular road trip is Udaipur, a lovely though to my mind essentially dull spot whose chief points of interest are the finely conserved City Palace of Maharana Udai Singh II, the renowned Taj Lake Palace hotel and the ritzy Oberoi Udaivilas overlooking Lake Pichola from shoreside just outside of town.

Udaipur is a great place to unwind, though. For those lucky enough to put up at Lake Palace, there is a ready excuse for enforced idleness, since the only way to reach the hotel or leave it is by boat. Three Weeks, Divine HEAD TO THE DESERT For more leisured travelers, and bucket list types, I advise a longer journey, one that heads from Udaipur, by road, for the majestic destination of Jaisalmer, a desert city that is among the oldest of Rajasthan’s fortress citadels, a once sleepy place whose tourist potential has been exploited as ruthlessly as its conservation has been sadly allowed to decline. Conservation groups are actively working to preserve this fragile monument, where ancient havelis, or merchants’ houses, with lacelike screen walls of wood or stone crowd narrow lanes. Their main task is to keep the fortress walls from outright collapse. In doing so, however, they hope to preserve the ineffable stillness of this golden walled island surrounded by the sand sea that is the Thar Desert, historically known as the Land of Death.

One can easily spend two days or more wandering the narrow lanes, where buildings crowd in on one another (and where pedestrians used to have to yield to cows). Time has a funny way of seeming to stretch infinitely before one in Jaisalmer, during days spent visiting the jewel-box Jain temples dedicated to Rishabhdevji, Sambhavanathji and Ashtapadi, idling on rooftop cafes drinking lassi or scanning the desert from the fortress walls. Advertisement Continue reading the main story STUMBLE INTO AN OASIS And when you have had enough of that, you can move on to other and even more obscure desert cities, my favorite among them being the rough-and-tumble city of Nagaur, home to a fine citadel complex known as Ahhichatragarh-Nagaur Fort . A 200-mile overland journey from Jaisalmer, Nagaur is a challenge to take up only after getting your travel legs in India. The drive is rough and dusty, and when years ago a woman friend and I first fetched up there, dust caked our clothes and filled every uncovered orifice, and our fillings had nearly shaken loose from our teeth.

We swore bitterly as we banged on the padlocked fort doors, like Dorothy in Oz, until the gates creaked open and a turbaned figure beckoned us inside. And there in a courtyard not far from a 17th-century stable block, we found a cluster of luxurious tents, their walls made from hand-block printed cottons, their camp beds covered in thick quilts, the private baths fitted out with showers that rained hot water. If it is true that in India a traveler is often tested by the tumult, the hustle, the dirt, the pollution, the first-world prices and sometimes second-rate service, the inevitable upturned palms and the overall din, it is also the case that as the advertising campaigns promise, India is in fact incredible. How else to explain the experience we had of emerging from our private showers at Royal Camp, Nagaur Fort (open only from October to March) to find that we were the only guests at the fort, the sole patrons being served cocktails by a freshly kindled wood fire in a broad Mughal courtyard under the cold black dome of desert sky? A delicious Rajasthani thali meal was presented on a table set up in an ancient pavilion. Perhaps too much terrible Indian wine was consumed.

In our individual tents the bedcovers had been turned down and desert chill staved off by hot-water bottles discreetly tucked into the beds. Delirious sleep overtook us. When we awoke, we found that our plans to stay just a night had suddenly changed. And that is something I forgot to mention, how in India time is oddly elastic, everything fraught with challenge and wonders so inevitable that it makes sense to allow for enormous changes at the last minute (to swipe Grace Paley’s wonderful phrase). In India the plans you made at home are seldom the final word on the matter. Do yourself a favor and keep that in mind. IF YOU GO Oberoi, New Delhi (Dr. Zakir Hussain Marg; 91-11 2436-3030; oberoihotels.com/oberoi_delhi ). IMPERIAL MIGHT A walk down the Rajpath will take you from Rashtrapati Bhavan ( presidentofindia.nic.in/rb.html ), the presidential residence, to India Gate. ALADDIN’S CAVES Sunder Nagar Market (Mathura Road, south of Purana Qila).

Nathu’s Sweets (2 Sunder Nagar Market; 91-11-2435-2435; nathusweets.com ). Bharany’s (14 Sunder Nagar Market; 91-98728-01419; bharanys.com ). SOUTH SIDE Gurudwara Bangla Sahib (Cannaught Place, at Ashok Road and Baba Kharag Singh Marg; banglasahib.org ). Jamali Kamali Masjid (in the archaeological village in Mehrauli). Baba Kharak Singh Marg (off Cannaught Circus). Santushti Shopping Complex (New Wellington Camp, Air Force Station, Race Course Road). MUGHAL MONUMENT

Question: Whose greatest work was laying out the plan for the city of New Delhi, India?
Answer: Edwin LUTYENS