Where to stay

Choosing where to stay in India comes down to matching the place to the trip you have in mind. New Delhi is the country's largest concentration of rooms here, while Chanakyapuri, Connaught Place, Old Delhi (Chandni Chowk) and Karol Bagh cover the capital's different moods, from leafy diplomatic avenues to the lanes around Chandni Chowk. In the north, Lucknow, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Noida, Ghaziabad and Greater Noida each carry their own guides, and further out Nainital's hill country appears through Mussoorie, Ramnagar, Chakrata and Lansdowne.

East and North East India spread the choice further: Kolkata, Digha and Siliguri in West Bengal, Guwahati, Jorhat and Dibrugarh in Assam, Shillong and Cherrapunji in Meghalaya, plus Gangtok, Tawang, Imphal and Aizawl. Pilgrim and heritage stops such as Varanasi, Gaya, Rajgir, Deoghar, Patna and Bhubaneswar sit alongside smaller towns like Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Roorkee and Bareilly. Decide first what pulls you to a region, then choose the town whose guide matches it.

Across these places the 3-star tier is the widest: almost every city and town has a 3-star guide, and many smaller towns such as Chakrata, Jorhat, Durgapur, Ambala or Panipat offer nothing above it. Choose 3-star when you want a straightforward base in a smaller destination or a central address in the capital's old quarters. The 4- and 5-star tiers cluster in the larger cities: Lucknow, Rishikesh, Guwahati, Kolkata, Shillong, Varanasi, Mussoorie, Kanpur, Dehra Dun, Gangtok and Greater Noida each list 5-star as well as 4-star and 3-star options, and Chanakyapuri, Siliguri, Ghaziabad, Ranchi, Digha and Jamshedpur group their upper tier as 4- and 5-star. Pick those when you want more facilities, more parking and family-friendly rooms in one place.