RAMBHA PALACE ODISHA

A heritage beauty is reborn as a luxury retreat.

- Shunali Khullar Shroff

Leaving Bhubaneswar Airport, our car travels through pastoral Odisha, lush from the recent rain. I feel anticipation and mild anxiety about our destination-the 200-year-old Rambha Palace near Chilika Lake. Odisha is terra incognita to me, a state I've often overlooked in my travels around India, and I don't know what to expect. After a two-hour ride, we reach the palace's grand, pink gates, with trees lining the driveway.

These majestic portals transport me to a time of opulence and ritual, where rajas held court and hunted game, while the ranis spent hours in their boudoirs. It's all rather enchanting, if not surreal. I'm ushered into the central hall, which makes quite an impression. The walls are painted a deep, dramatic hunter green. In the centre sits a large, perfectly restored billiards table.

Everything here is a nod to the palace's 18th-century origins and Odisha's heritage, with a promise of modern luxury. The hand-rubbed walls, the art deco and art nouveau touches across rooms, the centuries-old Persian rugs, the chandeliers-some antique, some custom-madeand the furniture, most of it from the palace before it fell into disrepair. Rambha Palace is where Downton Abbey meets Wes Anderson.

The palace has been spectacularly restored by Channa Daswatte, legendary Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa's protégé, whose team worked on it for six years. Unmissable is the Konark Chakra made by National Award-winning artist Ranjan Maharana, a descendant of the artisans who worked on the iconic Konark Sun Temple.