LOOTING THE LAND OF KINGS - Published in The Statesman, Oct 2009

Niki Seth-Smith visits Rohet Garh, one of Rajasthan's most prestigious heritage hotels.

Rajasthan's resilient identity is built on the shifting sands of relentless invasion. Historically the frontline of defence against the Afghans, Turks and Mughals - the Brits having cannily bought off the state's military muscle - now Rajasthan is facing a new kind of attack. Tourists to the area are increasingly demanding 'the real Rajasthan' – which for those with money to pay means nothing less than staying in the most exalted of the desert state's opulent forts and palaces. The ancestral owners, meanwhile, are compelled to welcome their effete yet formidable invaders, being badly in need of financial security in today's fast-moving India.

During a recent trip around Rajasthan, I became a foot soldier of this luxury tourist brigade. A week into the journey, I had already gorged myself in old harem quarters and hit the hay in converted palace stables on the well-trod trail from Jaipur to Jodhpur. The brochures had mentioned being 'welcomed by my hosts' but they had all apparently abandoned ship - for the capital, presumably, or for their still-unsullied Monsoon Palaces. I was not a little surprised, then, to meet Thakur Mavendra Singh taking tea on the fastidious lawns of Rohet Garh, one of Rajasthan's most sought-after heritage hotels.

The Singhs opened their home in 1990, retaining their expansive living quarters, having re-imagined the fort with the moneyed international traveller in mind. The twin walled enclosures now harbour gardens and a stately colonnaded swimming pool. The fort's distinctive frescoes are picked out in bisque, turquoise and sienna - answering the reduced palette of the surrounding desert. What impresses as much as the carved wooden ceilings and Mughal-era portraits is the sense of an aesthetic rooted in an intimate deference to time.

There should be a pause for reflection, however. What of the thirty-four guest rooms, free internet access and complimentary continental breakfast? What separates Rohet Garh from yet another Rajasthani hotel banging its heritage tabla with a special nod to the Americans and their nobility fixation?

The answer lies in the traditions not played out for the traveller's handy-cam. While Thakur Singh may sell extortionate gift shop goods, a percentage of these funds are channelled into local projects for the benefit of villages that would have once fallen within the Rohet fiefdom. As the family source all their staff from the locality, the garh also remains one of Rohet's primary employers. The Singhs have revised their ancestral duties to survive the latest wave of ferengis, furthering Rajasthan's long history of cultural assault and assimilation.

Such an elegant symbiosis between cosseted Western tourists and the Great Indian Desert way of life is bound to fissure at points. I was fortunate enough to sample the strange fruit born out of the cracks. Rohet Garh's village safari is hailed as exemplary in the heritage tourism industry. I and eight other guests signed up for the tour, which promised a visit to both a Brahmin settlement and a village belonging to the Bishnois, a tribe billed as 'the world's first environmentalists' due to their spiritual reverence of flora and fauna.

Meeting the Bishnois and learning of their twenty-nine ecological principles would have been unreservedly captivating, had it not been for the guide's distracting endorsement of the next stop on our agenda. He seemed to be saying that we would proceed to an opium tasting ceremony where we would all take opium. I was inclined to be happily intrigued but I could sense my American fellow guests tensing up in black anticipation of Lotus Eater dens and death in an Indian chokey. Preparing myself to laugh it off under the banner of 'cultural misunderstanding', I still managed to be taken aback on being ushered into a dimly lit hut full of opium addicts.

The line of Brahmins watched us enter with deep-set eyes, shadowed by uniformly flamingo-pink turbans. As we settled ourselves into an audience on the swept cow dung floor, water was poured into a tall metal instrument through what appeared to be two tea strainers, topped in the centre by a finger-sized Shiva icon. As the 'dope chai' dripped into the bowls below, our guide blithely regaled us on 'a day in the life' of these farmers: opium apparently acting as both morning set-me-up and post-toil relaxant. Meanwhile, the men under discussion eyed us with what may have been concealed embitterment, but was far likelier the single-minded anticipation of the addict.

After slurping up my palm-full of opium tea (the Americans declined with a 'no thank-you') I was conveyed back to camp to hazily muse on my stay. Perhaps Rohet Garh could be a little too authentic. Having expected a tranquil retreat, I wasn't entirely at ease with taking illegal substances or running into Thakur Singh every morning. Its hard to savour the plumpest lounge chair when the owner is wriggling on a bar stool. Yet, after weeks reclining in the palatial suites of the once-Maharajas, at Rohet I felt I'd finally landed. The coloniser is the colonised, as they say, and I don't think I could have learned this lesson more pleasurably than at Rohet Garh.