Holiday at Kipling’s Place

As literary travelers know, along with homes belonging to Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and James Thurber, among others, Rudyard Kipling’s home in Vermont has always attracted fans of the great British traveler and writer.

Located in Vermont, just a few miles outside Brattleboro, the house, known as Naulakha, is open to overnight guests. Anne Lawrence Guyon, writing for New York Times, recently filed her report of what is like to stay where The Jungle Book and Captains Courageous, among other works, were written:

With his study in the prow, kitchen in the stern, windows along the port side and staircases hugging its starboard wall, Naulakha (pronounced now-LAH-kuh) has been fully restored and contains nearly all original furnishings, including traces of Kipling’s Bombay birthplace and British parentage.

Unlike many former residences of cultural heroes, this is not a museum with audio tours or roped-off doorways. Naulakha is a vacation rental, and every aged book, period chair and elegant bed is available for guests to use, with a tacit expectation of consideration for the home’s historical significance.

As Guyon happily reports, Naulakha is not a stuffy museum where guests are prohibited from touching Kipling’s books or furnishings; a sense of conservation is all that’s required of guests. Naulakha is also unique in that most of the home and furnishings are original. David Tansey, president of Landmark Trust USA that owns the home, reports that he is only aware of one non-original window pane.

Naulakha is available for stays of three days to two months. Prices begin at $275 per night.