The Shahpura Bagh is just perfect. I've never felt so much "at home" in a hotel before. The host and his family made me feel as being a friend and not just a guest. The staff is very friendly, the room and the pool and garden is beautiful and the food is excellent. The trips to the old fort, the village and the farm were very interesting. It's a lovely place to relax - an oasis!

This was a great place to stop and have a bit of R&R. The hosts are extremely friendly and chatted over a drink at the pool in the evening which was really nice. Overall we liked it but for the price did not feel it was good value for money

Pros: beautifully decorated large bedroom, friendly hosts, interesting tour to the Fort for sunset, great pool and day beds, nice walking trail around the property

Cons: bed still hard, meals expensive (but very tasty). More information in the room would be great such as meal times and that there was a bar set up at the pool (we didn’t know and took up our own drinks), also it would be good to be shown around the property a bit as there was a lounge room we didn’t know about until we had dinner and it would have been nice to read the books there during the day. Again no music in the restaurant so felt like you had to whisper and leave quickly. Gardens weren't really very nice, definitely need a lot more work

I would also have drinks on the trip to the fort, there is a great sunset and you have a cup of tea but no booze (maybe it's a Aussie thing but a nice glass of wine would have been great)

On leaving and getting back to decent internet I had to go online immediately to identify if we had indeed been booked into the correct place. The hotel website shows a lovely building surrounded by lush greenery and a lake. It mentions fine dining. Ahem…….. if there were a trade descriptions act in India………..?
In fairness we had come from the magnificent Lake Palace so it was sublime to ridiculous. In our defence we were expecting this. The only thing we wanted / expected was to feel welcome and at home with a bit of warmth and charm. I’m afraid it did not deliver.
There are some plus points – huge room with pleasant en-suite bathroom and lovely hot shower which - if everything else had been good - would have been more than we expected. The genius of the superb pool area has probably pulled in and kept some guests happy – it is very pretty and if you want to stay more than one night essential. It also had ample supply of the ubiquitous parrots and chipmunks which cannot fail to delight. For these reasons I took my initial one star to two.
Then you look at the obvious benefit it must be to the family and the surrounding village. This business must succeed. It has the potential. My impression is that boredom and complacency have caused its downfall. That and a desperate lack of even basic hospitality. But it has the infrastructure and with a semi decent manager and chef (even the same person) this could be lifted fairly easily. Mostly however because of the income I feel it must supply to the community I mentally added another star raising it to three.
The worse thing however was the food. Truly dire. We arrived mid afternoon having had no lunch and asked for a snack. We were duly delivered a cheese and tomato sandwich (no choice) on stale brown bread. Hungry we both ate a quarter but couldn’t bring ourselves to eat more. Something warned us not to.
Therefore we headed for dinner with some enthusiasm. The waiter greeted us with a jug which looked like it contained a mojito. Good start? Nope this was lime and coriander soup – that is water, lime juice and coriander heated up I think. If by some chance this is a local delicacy then apologies but it tasted like sharp dishwasher. Then the main……. a load of unappetising veggie dishes, plenty of carbs – rice, thin naan / chapati, runny tasteless dahl and one meat dish of luke warm and tired chicken tikka on the bone. Universally poor. No idea what the dessert was (nobody told us) but looked and tasted like apple crumble been put into a blender then a ton of sugar added. Vile. Oh and don’t ask about the wine!
We retired to bed starving and waited for breakfast. Pouring my OJ from the carton (yes!) after extracting the ants from the glass and the sugar bowl we had a coffee and ate a small portion of scrambled eggs. Sure sign that somebody doesn’t care is that the milk (for cereal) was on the table before we arrived and on testing was above warm.
The bad news? We had booked and paid for two nights. Didn’t care. We left.
There is no way of being certain of these things but in four trips to India I’ve never had any stomach issues. A day after we left here (and seven days on) I have the squits. Thankfully nothing terribly horrid just some basic bowel issues. On that note back down to 2 stars.

Shahpura Bagh was a lovely quiet retreat in the country in Shahpura. The room in the small one-storey building was very spacious. The pool was very lovely. The restaurant served a fixed menu dinner and the owner and his wife circulated and chatted with guests, which was nice. The rate included a tour of a farm (owned by the same owners) and a nearby village. Unfortunately, on the day we were there, the regular guide was unavailable, and the substitute was unable to speak English, so our tour was sub-optimal, to say the least.