Before the other guests wake, just after sunrise, I like to climb to the highest point of my seven-storey palace and watch Devigarh come to life. I park myself in the bay window of a hanging balcony among the ringneck parakeets and watch staff busily ready the grounds for another impeccable day. Beneath me, they sweep pathways of any unsightly foliage and blooms that have fallen in the night, vacuum the pool and trim the striped lawns with a silent mower, making sure everything is perfection before guests even open their eyes.

Far below lies the village of Delwara, a pastel arrangement of cubes, domes and minarets that unfurls across a valley ringed by the rounded peaks of the 670-million-year-old Aravalli Range, India’s oldest mountains.