The Taj Nadesar Palace Hotel is a property owned by the maharajah of Varanasi and managed by Taj Hotels.

There are only ten suites in this luxurious hotel. Ours happens to be the Queen Elizabeth Suite, so named because that is where Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip stayed on February 25th and 26th 1961. Framed photographs of the royal couple at the hotel and of the royal signatures on the hotel ledger adorn the walls of the suite.

A photograph of us was taken as we arrived at the hotel and went through an elaborate welcome ceremony. When we entered our suite a few minutes later, that same photograph, enlarged and framed, was sitting on a credenza of the living room in our suite.

Now that’s a royal welcome!