Outside Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport, Chandigarh, spring’s exuberance is quick fading. Dust devils dance like dervishes throughout a golden brown land because the lodge automotive speeds in direction of Patiala, an hour-and-a-half away. The automotive manoeuvres a warren of streets, and swings previous a huge picket, iron-studded door into the Qila Mubarak advanced. Beats from a dholak rise to a crescendo, and employees in shell-pink sherwanis maintain a phulkari chadar for me to move beneath. As if on cue, a bathe of petals descends from the latticed balcony above.
A heavy door, with its inexperienced patina, swings open and Ran Baas The Palace reveals itself like an Andalusian dream — cupolas and arched corridors framing a sunken black-and-white tiled marble fountain. The warmth appears like simmer coming to boil, however the wonderful mist from the fountain cools with the perfume of a thousand roses.
The previous Motibagh Palace that now homes the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports
| Photo Credit:
Deepa Alexander
The 10-acre Qila Mubarak started life as a mud fort when the Sidhu Jat clan beneath Baba Ala Singh based the Patiala royal home in 1763. Later maharajas added the inside Qila Androon, the Darbar Hall and Ran Baas, the visitor home. During the heyday of princely India, Patiala was extra than simply a city one discovers if you journey elsewhere. The maharajas of Patiala, particularly the final two, Bhupinder Singh and Yadavindra Singh, have been recognized for his or her urge for food for the great life — sport (Bhupinder helped discovered the BCCI and gave the world the idea of the famed Patiala peg after successful a sport of polo; father and son have been presidents of the Indian Olympic Association), hunt, schooling, meals and jewelry (the many-layered Cartier necklace was commissioned by them). Post-Independence, the advanced fell into disrepair till the State Government determined to revive it. And that’s the place Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels and well-known conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah stepped in.
A view of Ran Baas
| Photo Credit:
Special association
The renovation story of Ran Baas The Palace, as soon as the abode of queens, is advised by way of hand-written postcards left on my pillow by the visitor relations govt, Pragati Gambhir, a Mughal miniature-style map of the advanced on the writing desk and atte de biscuit that Patiala’s bakeries have made for the reason that Raj.
“Ran Baas has 35 suites,” says Deep Mohan Singh Arneja, common supervisor, as we sit for top tea on the terrace of what’s arguably Punjab’s first luxurious palace lodge. A sea of cupolas, some with finials, others with out, stretches so far as the attention can see. A Cessna plane drones previous the purple-pink sky because the lights intensify the alcoves. “The Patiala Aviation Club was set up by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh for personal use,” says Arneja, including: “His larger-than-life persona defined life in Patiala. We have tried to recapture that grandeur.” Arneja has been on web site together with Abha’s staff for practically two years overseeing the palace’s transformation. Some of the partitions and roofs had caved in and fortifying the masonry took its time.
The blue and white themed Heritage Suite
| Photo Credit:
Amit Pasricha
The previous unravels in room after room with araish work, as Subhash Antony, govt housekeeper, walks me by way of the Sikh-Mughal-Rajput impressed advanced. “Blue, teal, yellow and white dominate the rooms,” he says, displaying the Heritage Suite, a spacious blue-and-white-themed room with parakeets in flight on the partitions and home windows that open to the Moulsari Garden. Chandeliers dangle over the claw foot bathtub within the roomy rest room. While this and the marble-bed Presidential Suite have a fair proportion of alcoves, the Shikarbagh and Naqqarkhana Suite have murals from one other time which have been left untouched.
The Shikarbagh Suite
| Photo Credit:
Amit Pasricha
“No two rooms are the same. Jharokhas throw light from the outside during the day, at night it’s the chandeliers from Klove Studio, designed like ear drops that light up the palace,” says Subhash of the chandeliers that complement the stairwell with a de Gournay miniature. Portraits of the maharajas — mustachioed, good-looking and bejewelled, murals that includes leopards, framed phulkaris, jamavars and big bathtubs seem as constants throughout the property as we take the buggy right down to the Jhalau Khana, a banquet corridor past a row of historic cannon that supposedly housed the Kohinoor earlier than it was shipped off to Britain.
The meals at Ranbaas
| Photo Credit:
Special association
That night, after a stress-free hour at the Aura spa, adjoining the swimming pool referred to as the Lassi Khana the place as soon as 1000’s have been fed from the palace kitchens, dinner is a lamplit affair within the courtyard beneath the shade of the 200-year-old moulsari tree. The meals is as luxurious because the rooms. “We have tweaked Patiala’s famed dishes, such as the chole bhature, so that it does not sit heavy,” says F&B supervisor, Aishwar Bhatia, though the palak patthe, a street-food traditional with fried spinach leaves and yoghurt is a winner when paired with the Gulaabi Jaam cocktail (gin, lime, triple sec, Shiraz cabernet) made at the burgundy-midnight blue upholstered bar, The Patiala. The subsequent morning’s meal at Neel, the all-day eating restaurant, and barbeque dinner by Chef Pratham Swaroop at the many-mirrored Sheesh Mahal are reminders of why Punjabi delicacies has gone international.
The Sheesh Mahal at Ranbaas
| Photo Credit:
Amit Pasricha
The itinerary for day two — taking within the sights of Patiala — has been determined for me by my assigned ‘butler’ Shaurya Kothari, a common administration trainee. Shaurya has the effectivity of Downton Abbey’s Mr Carson with none of his stuffy manner. We cross over to the Darbar Hall inside the advanced with its lengthy Belgian chandeliers virtually grazing the ground, portraits of British kings and queens and a vitrine filled with matchlocks. Men and ladies train within the early morning solar. We journey on to the Gurudwara Dukh Niwaran Sahib (remover of all obstacles) and the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports housed within the previous Motibagh Palace. Among the treasures listed below are the 1983 Sunridges bat of Kapil Dev’s, Milkha Singh’s spikes from the Rome Olympics and the music document of the Delhi Asian Games.
The Nabha palace now beneath renovation
| Photo Credit:
Deepa Alexander
That night we journey to Nabha, one among the many Phulkian princely states, for top tea. Meet Gurudev Singh, assistant to Preeti Singh, granddaughter-in-law of the final king of Nabha regales us with Nabha’s place within the historical past of the Sikhs and its kings who rebelled towards the Raj. The palace is present process a spherical of renovation and is styled like a many-tiered cake with stunning wrought iron and woodwork beneath the eaves of which wedding ceremony shoots are on. Tea arrives from each the royal kitchen and the lodge’s picnic hamper and is served in crockery with the palace insignia in a viceregal drawing room with silver frames and ebony-tipped strolling canes.
The market place in Patiala, outdoors the Qila doorways, is the place I purchase yards of phulkari and containers of pinni. When I return to the suite, a bubble tub has been drawn. Well rested I depart early, at daybreak. In the space, one can hear the azaan. As the automotive leaves the fort’s shadow, it’s as if I’ve turned the web page on a lamp-lit, horse-drawn age.
Rooms are priced ₹48,000 plus taxes upwards.
The author was at Ran Baas the Palace at the invitation of The Park.
Published – June 06, 2025 04:59 pm IST
