So, thoughts on Rajvilas.

Unlike Udaivilas, which merely pretends it is isolated, the Rajvilas is in fact isolated in a dirty rundown village outside Jaipur. It is convenient for nothing.

The hotel is done in a sort of Balinese tropical style with rooms in clusters in pond-inset courtyards. Rooms are all in pairs (with the exception of the tents, which have an inferior location behind the rooms - and I suspect a non-upgrade despite the additional rupees required to stay there) with a shared outer door. This is excellent for families as our room pair has a king on the left and a twin on the right. The king is regrettably made of two single mattresses, but this is not a major problem. The bathroom has a nice sunken marble bath with candles and as in Udaivilas has natural light from an outer walled garden (which you cannot enter as the door from the shower is locked).

The room itself is attractive but is slightly more dated than Udaivilas, being older.

Whereas the main pool and gardens don't really fit into the resort at Udaivilas at Rajvilas the pool and grounds are much more inviting. The restaurant area on the other hand is decidedly unimpressive - whereas Udaivilas has fancy domes and semi-private areas for a single table, the Rajvilas is just standard rectangular room with high ceilings as seen in thousands of hotels around the world.

As noted the Rajvilas has a horrible location with nothing outside and you are therefore largely at their mercy for transportation (best to arrange multi-day transport outside of the hotel - overnight stays for drivers costs only a few extra rupees in India) - 800 rupees an hour, plus taxes. This is at least 3 times more than you would pay outside. The vehicle, a Honda CR-V is ok but really no more comfortable than the standard Toyota Innova; our driver seemed to use his horn less than average and was slightly more courteous than the average Indian driver (who IME are entirely personable), and wears a uniform, but basically you are just paying through the nose for a service only marginally better than standard.

The housekeeping is, as with Udaivilas very good, small food gifts each day, they also brought my daughter a birthday cake without it being mentioned, which was nice.

The food in the hotel is similar to Udaivilas, however the chef at Udaivilas was more personable, making a point of greeting us each dinner and breakfast, he also was a more accomplished baker. A meze platter was slightly inferior to what I'd expect at an average Greek restaurant in the UK, but was more expensive and consisted only of babaganoush, hummous, overly thick pitta breads, olives, feta, a couple of non-descript deep-fried (slightly rancid oil?) things and a salad of lettuce and red pepper. You would be crazy to dine here if not staying at the Oberoi, given its poor location. OTOH if you are staying at the Oberoi, you are probably going to be stuck with a 2500 rupee taxi bill to dine out.

We went to Dera Amer, a somewhat upmarket elephant place well-recommended on Tripadvisor. http://www.deraamer.com/ I cannot recommend it entirely.

The price is 4,500/6,500 rupees per adult, free for children up to age 8 inclusive. The 4,500 rupees is for 1 hour elephant ride with lunch or dinner and inclusive of soft drinks, the 6,500 rupees adds elephant 'bathing and painting'.

We arrived at 5pm and a staff member was there at the unimpressive entrance room in a t-shirt. He hurriedly donned his turban and brown jacket, which didn't really give a very good impression, and we were given not-really-cool towels (which were not necessary as it was a cool evening) and a not-particularly-nice welcome drink. In contrast to the staff at the Oberoi the staff at Dera Amer were quite slovenly and didn't give us proper attention making merely an approximation of the experience they were supposed to be creating, for instance after we taken to the elephant bathing place they offered us drinks, which was nice, but then slouched around and chatted subsequently. It seemed they could not really be bothered; I asked a simple question of the staff about the ratio of male to female elephants at birth and had difficulty making myself understood and then in getting an intelligent/informative answer. From my brief meeting with the owner I got the impression that he was one of these DYKWIA Indians who regards paying staff properly as optional; he said that they are not normally open Sunday evenings but because he was friends with the Rajvilas owner, he was doing it.

The elephant bathing was in a concrete pool, which if you've seen a hippo pool at a zoo you can surely picture - brown with elephant dung, and not terribly pleasant - you were as preoccupied with avoiding the ...... water as scrubbing the side of the elephant. There are some pictures of what proper elephant bathing is like - in a nice crystal clear river in North Sumatra - here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvjsLp4yI7w The elephant painting was on its trunk and lasted about 5 minutes only, not an engaging experience at all. We were finished at 6pm and they then told us to wait (doing nothing) till 6:30, which was the time for our elephant trek.

The elephant trek was actually very good in comparison to more rustic ones I have had - a nice mattress on top of the elephant although some more cushioning around the side would be nice. The hour on the elephant at sunset was extremely pleasant although our elephant drivers talked across us in Hindi throughout and mine said to me at the beginning 'You from where?' 'UK' 'Ah UK, pounds very good'. He then directly asked for 'good tip', repeating this request at the end.

The grounds look very beautiful at sunset with flaming torches and verdant hills, however they told us that there were too many insects to eat outside so we ate in the steamed-up restaurant instead (nobody else was here only us - however an Indian group of around a dozen arrived around 8pm and did some sort of cut-price elephant experience riding briefly around the polo pitch). The food was standard Indian, not bad, they came and served us at our table from various dishes - lamb, chicken tikka, okra, vegetable dumplings, chicken curry, potato cakes, saag paneer - quite a good selection but frankly I felt more comfortable with the busy Indian thali place where they come and unceremoniously dump spoons of this and that than the slightly miserable staff here offering us their (im)personal attention.

So overall an entirely missable experience have no doubt, they could make it quite magical by serving the dinner outside under the troch light and sorting out the staff, but at the moment not world-class by any means. And if you go please save your 4,000 rupees (for two) and skip the crappy bathing + painting and just go for the elephant ride.

BTW, I should note that 'Tree of Life' is up the same track as Dera Amer and is I think a better location than Rajvilas, not to mention much cheaper (comparing their pool villas with those of the Oberoi) - it is just about 10-15 minutes from the Amber Fort off the Delhi road. http://www.treeofliferesorts.com/ I would strongly recommend taking a look at the offering there against that of the Oberoi - other costs will also be lower - 1300 rupees for four hours car hire from them vs. 1600 rupees + tax for two hours at the Oberoi, and four course dinner for 1500 rupees, significantly cheaper than the Oberoi. Have not visited however it was my choice but for the package put together for us by Oberoi. I do however note that the impression from the website is that the standard of finish is higher at the Oberoi.