New Delhi’s Taj Mahal Hotel is a local landmark, a top-class international luxury hotel, located in Lutyens’ Delhi, the historic city center that is home to India’s senior government officials as well as a number of millionaires and CEOs. The architecture in this district is historical and unique, and the meticulous landscaping means the city center enjoys temperatures several degrees cooler than the surrounding sprawl.

The Taj Lake Palace floats on the calm surface of Lake Pichola and was built in 1740 as a summer retreat, taking advantage of the cooling lake breezes. The Taj group took over in the Sixties, and the hotel has since become standard postcard (and Bond film) material.

When the Taj group uses the word “palace,” it’s best to take them seriously, we always say (and it says something about their selection that we actually do say it rather a lot). Taj Usha Kiran Palace, Gwalior, for example, is more than just an awfully luxurious hotel, though it certainly is that. First built as a guest house in preparation for a visit from a future King of England, it later became a residence for Gwalior’s ruling family — just the sort of institutional heritage the Taj hotels dine out on.

Taj hotels have established themselves as urban mainstays for the business-class bon vivant, absolutely, but they’ve also made room — under the Vivanta umbrella — for the sweetly indolent resort-goer. Vivanta by Taj – Bekal, Kerala fits this model to a tee, sprawling languorously over 26 acres on the palm- and coconut-bedecked shore of the Arabian Sea. It’s a sinuous, almost whimsical family of rooms and villas, each a swoopy-yet-solid architectural statement in plaster, wooden beams, pillars, and flared thatch roofing.

Yes, yet another Taj in Bangalore — the sixth, to be precise, counting all the Vivanta and Gateway spinoffs. To put it simply, tech is booming in Bangalore, and the market can bear it. Here, a matter of meters from the international airport to the northeast of the city, India’s homegrown luxury-hospitality group serves up 154 sleek, modern (if conservatively so) rooms to an ever-swelling flood of entrepreneurs, IT professionals, and Silicon Valley types of every conceivable nationality and persuasion.

We do love a good independent one-off boutique hotel, but we’re not above acknowledging when one of the big hospitality chains is doing extraordinary work. That’s very much the case with India’s massive Taj group at the moment, and Taj Rishikesh Resort & Spa, Uttarakhand is yet another stunning new opening — this one at a bend in the Ganges river in the foothills of the Himalayas, offering astounding views of the river and the mountains in every direction.

The first luxury hotel in Goa is still at it, under the banner of India’s most famous luxury-hotel brand: Taj Fort Aguada Resort & Spa, Goa. There’s no beating its setting, on over 40 acres of lush hillside gardens, overlooking both Sinquerim Beach and the ramparts of the 16th-century Portuguese-built Fort Aguada. And while the Taj shows plentiful Portuguese influence of its own — a stylistic thread that’s inseparable from Goan architecture — it’s far more elegant, even delicate, than the word “fort” might imply.

Say what you want about Dubai — go on, say it, we’ve all got opinions — there’s no denying that this is a town that knows a thing or two about luxury. And while we’re aware that there’s more to life than luxury, it’s probably best to put it all out of your head before you touch down in the Emirates. Because luxury is what you’re going to get, and plenty of it — especially here in the Burj Khalifa/Downtown district, at the palatial Taj Dubai.

In Indian hospitality there’s no more important name than Taj; the homegrown hospitality behemoth operates nearly a hundred hotels all across the country, from urban business hotels under the flagship banner to more exclusive, immersive luxury resorts like the Taj Exotica Resort & Spa, Goa. Here, on the spectacular white-sand Benaulim Beach in South Goa, you’ll find the living is extraordinarily easy.

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