Stress-Free at Suryagarh #40and10in2020

How many times have most of us had this thought : “I need another vacation to recover from this one.” I say this ALL the time. Vacations are exhausting. That’s because we have this idea on our heads about what a vacation is “supposed” to look and feel like. We are more into ticking off check boxes rather an actually relaxing. Which is why, for our 10th wedding anniversary, we decided we needed a real vacation.

Bharat and I aren’t really into remembering dates. For the two of us, it has always been more about a year-long, daily celebration of the little things, the smaller moments. Instead of the larger-than-life celebrations that are more about presenting an ideal showcase. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a time and a place for everything and to each their own. For us, a wedding anniversary usually entails ordering pizza and watching a stand-up comedy special while tucked in bed at home.

But, this being an anniversary that signified a whole decade of us being together and mostly happy about it, I would have regretted not doing something special. At Suryagarh, we mostly did the same we do in our apartment, but it was more fancy. We ordered a ton of room service ( Indian food, pizza, spaghetti and meatballs, – I had a noodle craving the entire vacation, lots of Gin & Tonics and beer ) and watched Halt & Catch Fire. There were also spa dates ( at Rait, thank you Pooja and Jyunti and PC and Mercy ), dinner dates ( Legend of Marwad ), lunch dates in the courtyard and at NOSH and sunset views.

We caught up on our sleep. The vegetative state was welcomed with sprawled arms and legs and torsos. There was a part of me that wasn’t entirely comfortable with doing nothing – I’m conditioned to be always doing something. I’m glad I was conscious of this hard-wiring and made extra effort to not succumb to it. I’m going to be 40 years old this year and it seems like this was my first ever vacation where I truly felt rejuvenated.

The two of us had always wanted to go back to Suryagarh exactly for this reason. Although Jaisalmer now has an airport, so there’s a larger influx of tourists, the way Suryagarh is, you can’t really tell how busy the hotel is even if it’s fully-booked. Even in the peak of the winter season, in the desert where temperatures can drop below zero, the hotel was not only fully booked, they were even entertaining guests for Dinner on The Dunes and night safaris! INSANITY!

And then of course, there’s all the Suryagarh details that invariably remind me of Karan Singh Vaid.

Both Narendra Bhawan Bikaner and Suryagarh Jaisalmer, serve bottled water in their rooms in glass bottles. I’m certain that it is a much larger maintenance task than simply providing throwaway plastic bottles. Which is why, I appreciate it even more.

I photographed the hotel and its experiences extensively in 2017. It is a beautiful property and the staff is great at assessing whether you’re the kind of guest that wants to be left alone or if you need a lot of attention.

Just look at our faces. To me at least, we look like we have zero stress in life. I’m writing this as I am absolutely full of anxiety and my face in the photographs is giving me hope. That a stress-free few days IS entirely possible. All I have to do, is to hop over to Suryagarh! Thanks for having us Nakul! And your Jaeger bombs are getting more an more infamous 😛

I’ll leave you with a bunch of photographs from the rest of our stay below.

We got lucky with the weather for about half of our stay. Sunshine and blue skies. The rest of it was foggy, grey and freezing. the last time we’d traveled to Suryagarh was in March and it was cold at night and hot at the peak of the afternoon but pleasant overall. I’m personally biased towards summers – I do not like the winter at all.

Suryagarh has added more rooms since we were there in 2017, including their luxurious Havelis. See and read more about them at the following links :

Suryagarh : Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

For previous Suryagarh photo features on the Naina.co blog, see the NAINAxSuryagarh tag.

#40and10in2020

If you’ve read this far and are wondering what this hashtag is : I’m turning 40 in 2020 and Bharat and I are celebrating 10 years of being married. There was no way I wasn’t coming up with a silly hashtag.

Thank you for reading along!

Love,

Naina