Sofitel Mumbai BKC

Admittedly, Sofitel is not the first luxury hotel brand that comes to mind when we think of India. But just as Taj suggests a certain sort of opulence even in, say, Cape Town, a Sofitel in Mumbai promises a gleaming, contemporary French style that works nearly anywhere. The cool, stylistically coherent interiors of a place where everything seems quadruply polished — the copper-and-glass staircase, the metallic bar stools, the white and black marble in the bathrooms, and even, it almost seems, the luminescent throw pillows on the beds — work especially well in a city of Mumbai’s dizzying scale.

For as stimulating as it is, it’s the kind of megalopolis that compels an experienced traveler to be extra sure to find a comfortable, well-managed hotel that can act, to use a cliché that here is truly apt, as an oasis. This oasis takes the form of a contemporary Art Nouveau building with a glassy, clean-lined exterior. Inside, all the rooms have dark wood floors, oversized tubs with separate showers, Sofitel’s famously cushy beds and toiletries by L’Occitane. All the comforts of Mumbai’s grand old hotels are here, but at this brand-new Sofitel they’re packaged with relative restraint, a virtue in short supply amongst the competition.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that such a French hotel is making a home in Mumbai. While the growth of India’s economic muscle is anything but a modest spurt, the development of cosmopolitan Mumbai appears downright steroidal. That “BKC” in the name of the hotel stands for Bandra Kurla Complex, the hotel’s home and the center of Mumbai’s financial district. It’s surrounded by the offices of several multinational corporations and it’s a short hop from the Indian stock exchange. The location is excellent if you’re doing business here, and the recently built Bandra-Worli bridge connects Bandra with the city center when it’s time for some leisure in the city — and by leisure we mean mind-boggling sensory overload, the sort of leisure that puts you in need of a good night’s sleep.

How to get there: The hotel is also served by 2 train stations at Bandra and Kurla and has easy road access from the Western Express Highway.