Kankarwa Haveli

The urban home of the Kankarwas, a well-respected Rajput family, was built in 1820 and renovated in 1993. Ideally located in Udaipur’s Lal Ghat area, right beside Lake Pichola, this is a welcoming and tranquil place to stay. Light pours into an open central courtyard decorated with leafy potted plants, and there’s a cosy library at one end with mountains of magazines and a phone that looks like it might have been the first ever invented. This is a quiet place to curl up with a book, accompanied by the family Alsatian, Bambi, who looks frightening but is an absolute softy. There’s also a rooftop restaurant, which serves simple but tasty ‘family-style’ veg thali but no alcohol. The chocolate pancake, omelette and South Indian filtered coffee at breakfast are first-rate. The 16 guest rooms are simple and whitewashed, with splashes of colour in the form of bedspreads, paintings, tiny moon- and sun-shaped stained-glass windows and vibrant lanterns, cushions and rugs. Most have lake views from huge window-seats, so you can watch the sun set over the shimmering waters and the Lake Palace from your room. There are no televisions, and wi-fi only works on the ground floor, but who needs technology in Udaipur?