Frommer's India (Frommer's Complete Guides)

Book Highlight: Paradisa Plantation Retreat, Cardamom Hills
Photo by Paradisa Plantation Retreat
The word "retreat" in the title couldn't be more apt, either. Guests stay in individual teak villas, built in traditional Kerala-style architecture and adorned with antique columns and intricate rosewood carvings. Each roomy villa has its own private setting and a stupendous view of the dense green hills overlooking a maharajah's former hunting grounds. You can swim in a footprint-shaped pool on a mountainside terrace, take yoga classes and ayurvedic treatments, play golf at a historic planter's club nearby, spot wild elephants and perhaps even tigers at the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary just over the hills.