The eye of the tiger is exactly like one you'd find in a jeweler's shop: yellow, flecked with black, iridescent, shiny and unblinking. The tiger might have remained unnoticed among the forest's striped shadows were it not for the alarmed bark of a sambar, a deer that is tiger dinner at the reserve in Ranthambhore National Park, in the state of Rajasthan. The 215-acre reserve wraps around an 11th-century fort within whose boundaries the tigers drag their kill into the shade of crumbling lakeside temples.
Tigers have been burning bright ever since I opened my eyes at dawn. Tiny ones are embroidered with gold thread into the ceilings of the tents at Vanyavilas, the new über–luxury camp that marks India's breakthrough into the sleek comfort perfected by the Singita game lodges, in South Africa. Vanyavilas— vanya is Hindi for "jungle"—set on the edge of Ranthambhore, is hotel as theater.
Prepare for a bumpy ride from the city of Jaipur to get there—weaving through the cows, the carts, the women with baskets of vegetables on their heads who are wearing pink, purple, scarlet saris slashed with gold—but once you arrive, all is sensational. You'll find flaming torches at the door of the main building, soothing fountains, a sunken courtyard with a glorious circular open fire surrounded by plush cushions of Rajasthani red. These are intimations of gracious company, and exquisite herbal scents of good food are in the air too.
Twenty-five huge tents (each is 790 square feet), reassuringly decorated in Raj-meets-modern style are reached through verdant gardens. The bathrooms come with claw-foot tubs and power showers. The beds are covered in crisp linens, the desks are ergonomic and there are private patio gardens (you could lie out there stark naked and write postcards). The excellent service is telepathic, invisible and the result of many hands making light work of one's requirements, both ironing and technological.
A swim? Beautiful girls in saris materialize by the pool with banana smoothies, cold towels, mineral water and that fine Indian thirst quencher Kingfisher beer. Lunch is deliciously delicate, and you needn't have curry: the executive chef, Saurav Banerjee, produces Western and Thai cuisine, as well as Indian, the latter as fine-tuned as anything you'd get at a Michelin-starred restaurant. But the bliss of Vanyavilas is that simple is no problem; ask for scrambled eggs or poached chicken and the smiles will be as enchanting, the meal as divinely prepared.
You can eat outdoors by the fire on those fat cushions, or in the air-conditioned splendor of the dining room. The former is less formal and more fun—and there's a greater chance of exchanging tiger stories with the nice people you met at the early-evening lecture given by Fateh Singh, who is known as "the great tiger man of India" (he was Ranthambhore's chief preservationist for many years). At Vanyavilas, you can be as convivial or as solitary as you like. But an evening spent by the fire and under the stars may well conclude with the odd brandy and in the company of new best friends who are likely to be British, Italian or Indian.
Here I must pause and repeat that this is India—but it's not the India that we once knew. Not the eccentric India of dilapidated palace hotels where the shaving outlets sometimes doubled as the drains, not the India of getting sick. Biki Oberoi, who invented Vanyavilas, and whose family name has been synonymous with fine Indian hotels for generations, has reinvented Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for the nervous traveler. His other Vilas properties—Rajvilas, in Jaipur; Udaivilas, in Udaipur; Amarvilas, in Agra—are 21st-century pleasure palaces. Rajvilas is a modern Rajasthani fort, Udaivilas is a residence for modern royals, and every room at Amarvilas has uninterrupted views of the Taj Mahal. All are immaculate; you could eat a Caesar salad off the floor. Oberoi built Vanyavilas because it completes a circle: the wildlife is the finishing touch after the palaces, the gems, the forts, the glorious panoply of color and history that is northwestern India.
Ranthambhore offers an excellent chance of seeing India's fabled tigers; some forty live in the national park. The number of travelers who come to see them has doubled over the past three years, to 100,000 annually. But this allure creates problems. Even for the reputable Oberoi property, obtaining all the daily permits visitors need to get into the park is a constant struggle.
Vanyavilas has comfortable four-wheel-drive Gypsy vehicles and every intention of giving you a private experience in the park. Know, however, that set routes are assigned to the vehicles daily, and yours may be tiger-free. This is not an African safari: there's no Big Five, just a Big One. And if you don't see a tiger, it's like being invited to meet Charlize Theron on set but getting stuck with the extras instead. The antelope and birds—there are almost 300 species of the latter—are delightful but not as exciting. And you may have to contend with the Gypsies and the big public buses with their tops sawed off converging on a single gloriously sleeping tiger: hidden tiger, crouching mechanical dragons all around.
