Kismet

Worth the detour

Houses that are not on the way to anything

None of these is convenient. That is the point of them.

Every house here asks something of you before you arrive — a seaplane, 5 hours of road, a landau behind two horses at the bottom of a hill. What you get back is a place nobody stumbles into, where the last hour of the journey is already part of the stay.

The distance is stated plainly under each one. Read it, decide whether the house is worth it, and if it is, the concierge will arrange the last leg — a car at the airport, or the seaplane out to the island.

5 houses

Passalacqua seen from above: terraced gardens and a pool step down through cypress and palm to the shore of Lake Como, with the wooded hills of the far bank rising behind.
Gardens and a pool stepping down through cypress and palm to the shore of Lake Como.Pictured · Passalacqua
A Lily Pool Villa courtyard at twilight from the deck: a lap pool lit turquoise on the left, a lily pond with a lantern standing in it on the right, and a thatched gazebo with a made-up daybed under it at the far end, with paddy dropping away behind.

Coorg

Evolve Back, Coorg

A working estate of 300 acres, with 59 villas hidden in it and no lobby at the end of the drive.

It is still picking coffee and pepper on the Cauvery, with the villas set into the plantation so that you hear it working without seeing it. The estate closes behind you and the noise of the road is gone in under a minute. Every villa has a pool, 4 steps from the bed. The infinity pool sits where the estate meets the reserve forest, adults only, with nothing on the far side of it but trees.

The detour
Bengaluru airport is 275 kilometres away, about 5 hours by road.
The house in full →
Vincent Beaurin's copper arch standing alone in the shallows off Randheli, the island's white beach and its wall of coconut palms behind it and the jetty running out on the right.

Maldives

Cheval Blanc Randheli

Nothing on this island is accidental, down to the copper arch standing alone in the shallows.

You do not arrive by boat. Cheval Blanc keeps its own Seaplane Salon at Malé — a lounge rather than a gate — and its own Twin Otter, which carries you out over the atolls and puts you down on the water. The arch is a Vincent Beaurin sculpture, and it tells you the place was composed rather than built. Jean-Michel Gathy drew the buildings into what was already there, and the interiors are rattan, bamboo and mother of pearl against pop yellow, taupe and white. There are 9 places to eat across 6 islands, and Carte Blanche is a table laid on a sandbank, or on your own deck, at any hour you name.

The detour
Roughly 40 minutes by Cheval Blanc's own seaplane from Malé, arranged by the concierge.
The house in full →
Lake Como by night from above Moltrasio: a lit bell tower among cypress trees in the foreground, the far shore's lights strung along the water under a darkening sky.

Lake Como

Passalacqua

A garden that reaches the water before you do, and 24 rooms in 3 buildings above it.

The villa was built at the end of the 18th century for Count Andrea Lucini-Passalacqua, and Vincenzo Bellini wrote La Sonnambula here during a stay in 1831. The De Santis family bought the house in 2018 and reopened it in June 2022 after a 3-year restoration. Its 24 rooms sit across 3 separate buildings inside terraced gardens that step down to a private jetty. Suite Bellini, at 250 square metres, holds a neoclassical music room under a double-height vaulted ceiling where Bellini once composed.

The detour
About 15 minutes from the town of Como, an hour from Milan.
The house in full →
The black-tiled main pool at Amanpuri lying dead still between two rows of coconut palms, timber salas along both sides and one figure standing at the far lip where the water meets the Andaman Sea.

Phuket

Amanpuri

A gate, and then a different island altogether.

Past the gate the noise stops. There is no lobby — a raised timber platform under a pitched roof, open on every side, and a view straight down a black-tiled pool between two rows of coconut palms to the Andaman Sea. The pool is 27 metres of freshwater clad in midnight-blue tile so that it reads black, salas at the corners, nothing at the far end but the sea. Phuket is loud in the middle and silent at both ends; this is one of the silences.

The detour
The drive from Phuket International is 45 minutes, most of it ordinary island.
The house in full →
The lawn at dusk with a fountain at its centre, old rain trees on the boundary and the lit arcade of the palace showing through them at the right.

Hyderabad

Taj Falaknuma Palace

The Nizam's palace on a rock above the old city, and the last of the climb is by landau.

Engine Bowli is an ordinary south Hyderabad street, tight and loud, and the gate at the bottom of the hill gives no sign that anything is above it. Cars stop there, and the last switchback is done at walking pace behind two horses, which takes about 4 minutes. The building arrives all at once: a white Palladian front 609 metres above the city, arcaded the whole way along. There are 60 rooms and suites in a palace built for one man, and a rosewood table 32 metres long, laid for 101.

The detour
Rajiv Gandhi International is 13 kilometres away, about 25 minutes to the lower gate.
The house in full →

The journey is the part that needs arranging. Send the concierge your flights and it is taken care of.

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