Ten top homestays in India

Homestays are becoming increasingly popular, allowing you to experience real India at inexpensive prices, says Lesley Gillilan The Indian “homestay” experience has grown from strength to strength since the idea first emerged in Kerala, a decade or so ago. Now there are homestay tours and specialist agencies for the many hospitable families offering modestly priced accommodation in a variety of homes from city apartments to plantation houses. The majority are in the far north or the far south (Delhi, Rajasthan, ...

Berge: is this the coolest lodge in the Alps?

There is no reception, no bar, no restaurant and no room service, but Berge, at the foot of the Bavarian Alps, is the ultimate mountain retreat It’s been raining for days. The sky is a murky grey and the mountains, rising steeply just a few hundred metres away, are a blur. After a 90-minute train journey from Munich, I am standing outside the little station of Aschau, at the foot of the Bavarian Alps, waiting for Nils Holger Moormann, the ...

Five-star hotel brings a touch of luxury to Cape Town’s regeneration

With the opening of the Taj Cape Town, will the city prove the broken windows theory of urban decay? The broken windows theory of urban decay first appeared in the magazine The Atlantic in 1982. Social scientists James Q Wilson and George L Kelling proposed that tiny problems, such as broken windows, can soon become huge ones – squatting, vandalism and violent crime. It’s been a seductive idea ever since: that fixing windows, picking up litter and scrubbing graffiti are ...

Arabian nights: stylish places to stay

Four new and revamped urban bolt holes in the Middle East and north Africa • Cairo’s Talisman Hotel (i-escape.com/talismanhotel.php), which opened a year ago near the Egyptian Museum, claims to be the city’s only boutique hotel. Its 24 colourful rooms (£66 B&B) with chandeliers, parquet floor and beautiful quilts, take up the fifth-floor of an apartment block in downtown Cairo and, along with decadent salons and a dining room, are accessed by an old wrought-iron lift. • Hard to select ...

New York’s 10 top boutique bolt holes

Uptown, Downtown, Brooklyn and Staten Island… here is our pick of New York’s hippest hotels and B&Bs When it comes to finding a boutique hotel or B&B in New York, many visitors look no further than central Manhattan. But if they venture out of the city centre they will discover little-known and up-and-coming neighbourhoods filled with character, and home to some of the city’s most charming boutique hotels and guesthouses. Here, local experts give us their lowdown on the ideal ...

Peru’s jungle treehouse

One of the ways to help save the Amazon is to visit it. And you can stay in luxury in this Peruvian treehouse above the rainforest canopy The night before I flew to the rainforest, I stayed at a hotel in Cuzco. There was a startling mural stretching the length of the dining room which showed a fantasy of an Amazonian paradise: bare-breasted maidens bathing in idyllic pools surrounded by luxuriant greenery and compliant jungle animals; the only thing most ...

Branch out: five great treehouses

Act like Tarzan and Jane, from the woods of West Sussex to the jungle of Costa Rica West Sussex You Tarzan? You’ll think so when you stay at the new treehouse room at Castle Cottage, near Fittleworth, which has a leopard print bedspread, furry cushions and tree trunks protruding into the bedroom. The large, luxurious cabin is built into a sweet chestnut tree, with glass doors in the bedroom and a glass ceiling in the bathroom, and a massive balcony ...

Rooms at the top: Sweden’s stylish new treehouse

Treehouse holidays are going up in the world, but the new Treehotel in Sweden’s Lapland, with its futuristic pods, aims to soar above the rest, states Rhiannon Batten Towards the end of his 2008 documentary, The Tree Lover, which explored the link between trees and people in Sweden, Jonas Selberg Augustsén says: “Imagine being here on the veranda on a summer evening, or listening to the rain on the roof with the stove purring quietly.” As he states this he ...

Ten hostels in Europe for under £15

From a zone one London base to a boutique Alpine lodge, Robert Savage finds 10 European hostels to suit backpacker budgets Backpacking special: see tomorrow’s Guardian Travel 1. The Winston Art Hotel and Hostel, Amsterdam, Holland With 40 unique rooms styled by local Amsterdam artists, the Winston would not look out of place on the cover of Wallpaper* magazine. More memorable design themes include bondage, ultra violet and vodka, plus another with life-size robots hanging off the walls.

Hotel review | Salthouse Harbour Hotel, Ipswich

Expect modern art and design at this quayside hotel – and knockout marina views, writes Sally Shalam A pre-requisite for writing this column is openness to unlikely locations. Some of you might already be wrinkling your noses at Ipswich (instead of say, Oxford, Cambridge or York), but the clue is in the name of this four-star hotel. I call M (who is not one of those fairweather friends only available for Cornish beach trips). “I’m up for Ipswich – yeah!” ...