With polo now being played in upwards of 80 countries around the world, there is no shortage of holiday destinations for aficionados and their families looking to combine their passion for the sport with other activities ranging from hunting and fishing to cameltrekking and tiger-spotting. International travel companies such as Abercrombie & Kent and IJ’s Exotic Polo Holidays offer luxury off-the-peg or customised packages to a plethora of destinations, but it can sometimes be more satisfying to plan your own itinerary, helped by polo friends, before you go globetrotting. Here are a few tips on where to go and what to do in two of the most popular countries for polo vacations: India and Argentina. INDIA
In the mid-19th century, representatives of the British Raj ‘discovered’ the ancient game of polo in Manipur in north-east India. The sport soon spread and today, the Indian Polo Association lists 35 clubs, from Bangalore in the south to Kolkata in the east and Delhi in the north. However, the real heart and soul of Indian polo is in Rajasthan, to the northwest, on the frontier with Pakistan. Jaipur, the region’s capital, began its rise to polo fame between the wars, when the late Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II (1912-1970) took his Jaipur team to England and won every major tournament there. ‘Jai’, as he was known, became a 9-goal player and, for more than a decade, his team dominated Indian polo. Jai went on to play polo all over the world. His Jaipur home, Rambagh Palace, became a haven for polo-playing friends and celebrities from abroad. When the Indian government withdrew the privy purse from erstwhile rulers of princely states, he was one of the first of the maharajas to turn his palace into a hotel. The Taj Rambagh Palace now offers five-star accommodation with echoes of the glory days of Jaipur polo, and the adjacent
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