By the time you arrive at Meghauli Serai, your expectations are high. This better be good, you think, because, boy, has it been a schlep.

If one is going to make the journey— Delhi-Kathmandu at the crack of dawn, a disorienting transfer from Tribhuvan international to domestic, a several-hour wait for the 30-minute 20-seater flight to Bharatpur, which turned even this seasoned flyer queasy and claustrophobic and, finally, a bumpy hour-long ride to the hotel gates—one expects it to end in something special. And it does.

The first moment of arrival-relief will probably differ for each traveller. For some, it will be the Downton Abbey welcome by a very warm staff with cold towels. For others, the handicraft-dense lounge-lobby area, or the sight of the large infinity pool. Those things weren’tlost on me, but I didn’t quite get there till I had closed the door to my private villa, walked through the bedroom, stepped off the deck, past the private plunge pool, and stood among the tall swamp grass, looking out over the Rapti river to Chitwan National Park on the other side.

That view is worth the schlep. We are in Nepal’s Terai plains. Being the sort of traveller who becomes passionate about middle-school geography each time I find myself in a distinctive landscape, I am able to report that the Terai is characterised by riverine grasslands and sal forest. What that means for non nerds is that it is a sensory knockout. Its flat expanse feels freeing and inviting and fills you with the urge to roam. And the light. There’s something pre-21st century about the light here, warm, hazy and hay coloured. So when I stand at the edge of the river, contemplating the dense sal and the tall grass and the water hyacinth, I feel lightheaded, vaguely drugged.