X on Lake

Think of it as an unconventional home that decided, quite firmly, that life is better lived without concrete towers pretending to be holidays. Architecture here keeps an idyllic island mood under thatched roofs, because a hotel in a building is not a holiday (and anything stacked in a building is simply not invited to the conversation). X-on-Lake is admittedly, expansive and expensive to run: the sort of generous madness that only makes sense when you are doing what you love: sharing a lavish 25 acres home and creating a life-as-it-should-be environment, soil to soul.

Twenty-five of those acres hold twenty-five chalets. That is 21st-century luxury in its purest form: clean air, a living biosphere, and uninterrupted lake views. There are fish ponds, four pools, a lazy river, a spa salon, a gym taking shape, a games pavilion, three electric buggies, a library, a padel court, cricket nets, woodsy jungle pockets, a volleyball court, ten thousand square feet of pool deck, and infinity edges that dissolve into the horizon. Plus an additional neighbour's ten acres are reserved for quieter things: grazing cows and buffaloes, happy horses, butterfly shrubberies, peacock abodes, natural biosphere, rice and wheat patches, and all things sacred. Depending on the season you arrive, you will find either green rice fields or the golden-yellow hues of wheat. Planting and harvest mark the rhythm of the land.

The place orchestrates two seasons, both beautiful and completely authentic. There is the monsoon, with its poetic charm of rain on thatch and the soft, saturated greens that follow. And then there is the rest of the year, when bougainvilleas throw a burst of colour and sound across the hillside and the sunsets become pure colour therapy! On any given day the promise holds: either the quiet drama of rain or the most spectacular light that you will see in the form of sunsets, sunrise and moonrise. Birdsong threads through both seasons, joined by the call of wild peacocks and, after dark, the frog song that rises from the water.

It is a celebration of the unspoiled canvas and of the soulful essence that still lives in certain places. Ordinary weekends have a way of turning extraordinary here. Different people meet different versions of the same land; that is why it is called X, the mysterious variable you come to discover and define for yourself. Here you do you.

Perhaps by the end of your stay you will have gotten a little closer to Charles Baudelaire's definition of happiness: « heureux celui (…) qui plane sur la vie et comprend sans effort le langage des fleurs et des choses muettes. » Happy is he who hovers over life and understands with ease the language of flowers and voiceless things.

Pura Vida!