Amanbagh

I was not looking forward to driving on Indian roads, but the journey to Amanbagh was totally fine. Our driver was excellent. We had some traffic leaving Agra meaning that it took us 4 hours door to door. It’s a very pretty drive, particularly as you get to the small country roads near Amanbagh. So much has been said about this resort, which I will not repeat, but we really loved our time here. Excellent service, the best food of the trip with delicious dinners next to the wood burning fireplace and truly stellar service. I was a little disappointed with our first room, which was a garden room on the right side of the pool looking away from reception. The interior was large and beautiful, but the garden was backed by dense shrubs (I think to mask the road) meaning that there is no view and it is a little dark. When a family from Mumbai arrived with their screaming baby that we could hear quite loudly in our suite, we complained and were moved to a room on the other side of the resort. This was also a garden suite, but was much nicer as we had a view of the hills and it was considerably lighter.

We went on different guided treks each morning, which was the high point of the entire trip. The countryside is so beautiful and we felt incredibly privileged to see such an unspoilt area of the world. It felt like going back hundreds of years in time. We also went to see Bhangarh and did the cow dust tour – both highly recommended. Massages in the spa were all superb and reasonably priced. Staff are excellent, including the new F&B manager who arranged for lots of different local specialities to be prepared for us. Aman at its best. We thought about doing one of the private dinners, but felt it was just too cold at night to be away from the wood fire!

A couple of niggles:

1. The pool is much, much too cold. We were told it was heated, but in mid February it was not usable at all, which was a real shame.
2. The wine list is fairly limited and expensive and has some questionable choices.
3. No coffee maker in the room and no snacks. Very limited fruit basket. I mentioned the coffee maker and we were told they did not have any. Instead they brought complementary coffee to the room every morning, which worked well.

We stayed for 5 nights and it was, perhaps, one night too many. If the pool had been heated we may have been happier with a final day spent relaxing poolside. 9 out of 10.