Samode Palace

Everything was impeccable. Dev was a great host and he happily upgraded us to a very large room. Overall 10/10. The breakfast was also very tasty. The Samode Haveli cocktail with gin is a must have! We also visited the Sheesh Mahal which was beautiful.

Went for a spontaneous break with friends and had a blast. The rooms were super spacious and perfect for late nights catching up with the gang. Staff was polite and helpful. Food options are limited and since the location doesn’t allow delivery etc it’s better to be better planned on that. Overall a great experience.

a wonderful historic heritage hotel. Beautiful grounds, rooms well appointed. Food was excellent. The public areas had so much history, they were fantastic. A film crew were operating whilst we visited, they were very noisy and did not take into account the needs of the guests. our biggest concern was that monkeys used our balcony at night to sleep and defecate on, management need to address this issue as we were unable to safely use the balcony

This was to be the highlight of our tour of Rajasthan, being the biggest and most expensive place we would stay. Expectations were high, maybe too high, and unfortunately it didn’t deliver. Where to start? Well 6 months earlier we had booked this place ***** with 11 other stops on a 3 week tour round the state. It was confirmed and then paid for ***** with all the other stops. Not long after we got an email saying they had received a wedding booking for the whole hotel and just cancelled our reservation. Standard procedure apparently but clearly not a procedure any right minded person outside India would think as acceptable behaviour. Still wanting to visit this place they gave us an alternative date but this of course meant that many of our other bookings needed to re shuffled where possible, but not all could be which left some pretty long drives between some places. So arriving after a 6 hour drive we finally checked in with high expectations of what would be our biggest and most expensive palace. We were shown our room and it was nice. Just ….. nice. It was a bit dark owing to the small windows and the ‘balcony’ was more like a fire exit. You certainly wouldn’t spend any time there. But the room itself was very oldy-worldy and ….. nice. But the thing is we were expecting ‘amazing’. We went to the pool and contemplated what had happened and eventually I went to reception and asked if they had other rooms we could check. They showed us a few rooms including one with a balcony and corner view where you could see the sunrise, look down over the main pool and almost sunset. The room had a totally different feel to our first room, arguably not as nice BUT it was light, had a nice feel and a great balcony. We were happy to move. It still wasn’t ‘amazing’ but fit better for us. After one night there we both woke up with stomach issues which was strange as we’d really enjoyed the food the night before and the restaurant staff were great. So we both took it very easy that day but in the evening we suddenly heard a loud cracking noise and found the large glass shower wall had detached itself from the wall and was balanced perilously. Pretty dangerous. So once again we were forced to move. They showed us a few quite soulless rooms but eventually found a good enough one with a balcony at the front of the building overlooking the garden. Nice but not amazing. At this point I think the only thing they could have done to save us from leaving all a bit disappointed was give us a royal suite but they didn’t bite. The hotel was almost empty but they still didn’t offer a royal suite. After staying 3 nights we checked out having still enjoyed the place but leaving all a bit disappointed. It was stop number 6 on our trip and it is currently our least favourite so far. Likely to be 12th by the end too. On the plus side, the palace itself is impressive. It’s big, it’s grandiose and sits in a beautiful peaceful valley with mountains and nature all around. The staff a