A Luxury Jaipur Hotel With the Regal Soul of a Palace Built for a Princess

There’s no dramatic grand entrance at Raffles Jaipur, a new 50-room hideout, ferreted away in the outskirts of the city next to behemoths like Fairmont and Le Méridien. Guests arrive via a discreet drive and are immediately swept out of view into a pretty pastel shikar tent by moustachioed sentinels in pristine white uniforms. From there, they are presented with cool, blossom-scented towels and escorted to the peaceful patio—dressed with orange trees, tinkling fountains, and a scattering of rose petals—before moving indoors.

All this choreographed discretion is deliberate: Raffles Jaipur opened earlier this summer as the hyped followup to the ultragrand Raffles Udaipur, which opened in 2021. While the 21-acre Raffles Udaipur is a princely palace with a formidable storm-grey exterior and desirable private-island-on-a-lake location, Raffles Jaipur (at less than half the size) feels like a Mughal court’s zenana, the private palace quarters designed just for women.

Historically, the zenana were exceptionally luxurious with ornate landscaping and lavish mirrored and marbled interiors. Here is no exception. The hotel is a ground-up new build, and great care was taken to infuse the space with a rarefied and unabashedly feminine air, especially in the magnificent atrium of carved sandstone columns, cusped Mughal arches, and preserved palms, and scented with neroli and saffron. From this hub, it’s just a few steps to the hotel’s main restaurant, Arkaa, where a flutist presides over breakfasts of flaky French pasties, bajra khichdi (a warming millet porridge), and a special Queen’s Blend marsala chai, made from 100 different flowers.

The famous Writers Bar (a Raffles signature) is just off the atrium. This baby-blue jewel box is the spot to try a Jaipur Sling, a play on the Singapore Sling, made here with Indian dry gin and Chandr Hass, a potion-like herbal liqueur from an aristocratic family from Kanota, along with refreshing pineapple juice and lime to give it a distinctive sunset hue.

The rooftop houses an impressive temperate-controlled pool framed with tasselled parasols, cabanas overfilled with fabric pillows, and domed chhatri pavilions. It’s also home to a Mediterranean restaurant and bar, open for guests during the day but welcoming the local glitterati come nightfall.

This isn’t the only pool: all 50 rooms have either private pools (mainly in the fittingly named Princess Suites on the ground-floor rooms), plunge pools, or outside soaking tubs on the terrace. Then there’s the royal-ready Maharani Royal Suite, with a pool on the patio, plus one-of-a-kind decor like a hammered-silver dining table seating six, a minibar with intricate bone-inlays, and a private steam room. It’s the ultimate party pad or pampering palace, because girls—even maharanis—just want to have fun.

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