The sprawling mansion looked like a medieval European castle with its arched bay windows and turrets in each corners, the dark red laterite façade gleaming in the morning sun. We got down from our car, and were immediately greeted by Debjit Singh Deo, who owns and runs this heritage building amid the bucolic settings of rural Odisha in eastern part of India. Debjit’s great grandfather King Jyoti Prasad Singh Deo of Panchkote had built this two-storeyed mansion in 1933 as a royal hunting lodge.

The stately manor that dates back to 1804 is the residence of the Bhanj Deo royal family that had ruled the princely state of Mayurbhanj in eastern India

A mountainous land in the Northwestern part of India, the state of Himachal Pradesh has long been a paradise for travelers. Colonial-era hill stations, idyllic rural settlements and verdant valleys dot the expanse of this North Indian state that was once a part of undivided Punjab. However, Kangra Valley, in the south-eastern fringes of Himachal, has always remained a bit off the tourist radar.

Upstream along the quiet banks of the Ganga, not far from the bustle of Calcutta, lies a string of towns, where a slice of Europe came to roost long before the British did.

Mehman nawazi (hospitality) is etched in the ethos of Kashmir and her people, a centuries-old legacy of this Northwestern Indian state. Every time I land myself in Srinagar, my friend Mushtaq would pick me up late in the evening, and a half-an-hour bumpy ride through the Srinagar-Ganderbal highway would take us to his humble two-storeyed house. A four-course dinner of goshtaba, yakhni, rogan josh and rishta follows. Not necessarily in that order, but always hearty portions of meat, rustled up  in authentic Kashmiri  style.