Est. 1897 Curated with unnecessary formality. ashcroftmanor.com
ASHCROFT MANOR
The DirectoryAsiaIndia
Plate III · iv · The Country

India

Two entries, and in both of them the building is quietly the better object.

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By city

A morning each, in cities a long way apart. Neither is a detour from the other.
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The entries

Filled marks are places I have stood in.
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Notes for India

Two entries is not a verdict on the country; it is a verdict on how little of it I have walked. What I have seen suggests the same habit twice over — a nineteenth-century civic building put up with more conviction than the collection it was built to hold, and then loved, or neglected, or both by turns.

I went to both in the cool months, January in Mumbai and February in Jaipur, and I would not now go in any other season. The first hour after opening is the whole trick: at the Albert Hall the coaches arrive early and in force, and once they have, the room is no longer a room.

Mumbai and Jaipur are not a pair. They are a flight apart and belong to separate journeys — pretending otherwise is how people end up seeing neither properly. Take each on its own morning, and give the building at least as long as the cases.

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