India's most luxurious homes

Private swimming pools, elegant gardens en suite in your 22nd floor apartment, elevators to bring the Merc up to your floor, exclusive health clubs for your family and mini golf courses just in case you feel like swinging the five iron on a Sunday morning—Indian developers are redefining luxury beyond imagination. And we are sure that even as you are reading this, some ambitious realtor is planning apartments or villas that will make some of the magnificent residences featured in the following pages look positively pedestrian.

For our cover package on India’s most luxurious apartments, our reporters in the five metros met some of the country’s top builders to make a list of apartments that no longer cost just lakhs or even a crore, but five, 10, 20 and, in some cases, well over 50 times that much. Money, of course, wasn’t the only filter we used. What mattered in the end was—were each of the apartments really redefining luxury? We believe they do. And what’s more, the apartments and villas featured in the cover package are still up for grabs.

Looking for property abroad? Read the piece on the world’s most expensive houses or, if you are really getting a headache figuring out the multiple zeroes in your bank balance, buy an island. The choice is yours. Prices can go up to Rs 500 crore, but what’s money if it can’t cure your numbers-induced headache?

In the Travel section, we take you to the cool climes of South Africa to watch the humpback whale in action. We also decode the secrets of flavoured vodkas and tell you all you need to know about Ducati bikes, which are set to roll into India soon. Let the good times roll.