The Smart Set

Literary festivals are a fresh way to get an inside look at an alluring destination.

- Anderson Tepper

AMONG MY WRITER friends, the Jaipur Literature Festival, or JLF, is something of a Shangri-La: an eclectic gathering born in 2006, on the lawns of the city's Diggi Palace. Authors debut new work, writers hold forth in panel discussions, and fans line up for autographs; the legendary editor Tina Brown called it “the greatest literary show on earth.”

After attending a popup version of the JLF in New York last September, I decided to make the trip to India. Stepping onto the sprawling grounds of the Clarks Amer hotel, the festival’s home since 2022, I reached for comparisons: Monsoon Wedding meets