A Peacock Came to Tea

I have had three careers, and every one of them has taken me to hotels. As a banker, they were places to sleep between meetings. As a luxury travel journalist, they became the story itself. And now, as the founder of a jewellery brand, I find myself checking in with sketches, samples and a to-do list that never seems to get shorter.

Through all of it, there was one hotel I had always wanted to stay at: The Oberoi Rajvilas in Jaipur. When I finally arrived, it wasn't on assignment and it wasn't with my family. It was just me.

I had landed in Delhi at what felt like four in the morning and driven straight on to Jaipur, and by the time the car pulled in I was completely frazzled. Then the gates closed behind me and the whole pace of the world changed. Birdsong replaced the traffic. Water ran through the gardens. And everywhere, unhurried and entirely unbothered by me, there were peacocks.

My tented villa was enormous and quite beautiful, and for the first evening it felt almost wrong to be in it alone. It is the kind of room you want to share: the sort of place where you turn to say "look at this" and there is nobody there. But then there is your own pool, your own garden, your own small, walled world, and slowly the solitude starts to feel like the luxury it really is.

The first thing I needed, though, was the spa. I booked a massage almost the moment I arrived, and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it saved my sanity for the rest of the week. For one hour there was nowhere to be and nothing to sort out. I came out feeling that I had finally arrived, rather than merely travelled.

I was never really alone. There was always a peacock somewhere close by.

And here is the thing about Rajvilas: you are never really alone. Wherever you are — by the pool, on the paths, at breakfast — there is always a peacock within a few steps of you, fanning its tail as if the whole performance were laid on for your benefit. They became my company for the week, and I grew rather fond of them.

The days themselves were anything but serene. Workshop visits blurred into supplier meetings, photography and long conversations about colour and craftsmanship. Lunch was usually a club sandwich grabbed between appointments and another cup of chai before rushing off again. But every evening the gates closed behind me once more, and the hotel did its quiet work.

In five days, Riya — my right-hand woman in Jaipur — and I had exactly one hour that wasn't spoken for. No workshops, no suppliers, no photography: just afternoon tea, laid out in the garden outside my villa. We had barely sat down when a peacock wandered in. Then another. Before we quite understood what was happening, one of them had hopped onto the chair beside the table and was eyeing up the sandwiches.

We laughed until we cried. It wasn't remotely the afternoon you could stage for a photograph, which is exactly why I loved it.

For all of Rajvilas's grandeur — the tented villas, the gardens, the spa, the little temple, the sense of being a world away from the city outside — that ridiculous moment is the one I remember best. I had waited years to stay here, and I arrived alone. I never once felt it.

Photographs by Caron Bluestone.