India · State of Rājasthān
Where to Stay in Kota, State of Rājasthān
Kota is a city of southern Rajasthan in India, an old Rajput capital on the Chambal river, now known across the land as its city of coaching.
Find your area →
Where to stay in Kota
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Where you stay in Kota turns on the old city or the river. The streets around the palace keep the markets, the temples, and the ghats within a walk, and staying downtown suits anyone here for the old town. The palace rises over the river.
Markets fill the lanes. Out toward the Chambal gorge and the plateau, the town gives way to the river cliffs, the dams, and the dry hills. A room by the river trades the streets for the gorge views, the boat rides, and the quiet of the Chambal.
The green river runs below. Stay downtown for the palace, or by the river for the gorge. The old city lies a short way in.
About Kota
Kota is the coaching city on the Chambal.
What is Kota known for?
On the banks of the Chambal river in the Hadoti country of Rajasthan, it was the seat of a Rajput princely house, and it keeps a great riverside palace of the old rajas, the fine woven Kota doria cloth, a river gorge of cliffs and crocodiles nearby, and thousands of students drawn from across India to its schools. The river runs green below. The dry plateau spreads around.
What are the main landmarks in Kota?
The City Palace stands over the Chambal at Kota. The great fortress-palace of the old rajas on the riverbank, its painted halls and carved gates rising above the water, looks out over the river, the emblem of the city, by the Chambal. A river gorge lies upstream.
The Chambal runs through cliffs where crocodiles bask, while the old temples, the lake pavilions, and the riverside ghats mark the country around Kota.
What is the history of Kota?
Kota grew as the seat of a Rajput house. Once part of the lands of Bundi, it became a princely state of its own three centuries ago, and its rajas built a great fortress-palace on the bank of the Chambal, holding court in painted halls above the river. Painters made its name.
The court of Kota kept a famous school of miniature painting, whose hunting scenes and portraits are prized ever since, and the city grew rich on the trade of the Hadoti plateau. The state joined free India. When the princely states were folded into India, Kota lost its rajas but kept its palace and its crafts, and grew as an industrial city on the Chambal, its dams and factories rising by the river.
Students filled the city. In the last decades Kota became the coaching capital of India, drawing tens of thousands of students to prepare for the great exams, and it kept its old palace and its river gorge through the change. The Chambal still runs by the palace.
Kota keeps its palace and its river in the Hadoti country.
Where is Kota?
Kota lies in the south of Rajasthan in India, on the Chambal river below the Hadoti plateau. The city stands on the east bank of the Chambal where the river runs in a gorge through the rocky tableland, in a drier country of scrub and ravine, with low hills rising away to the south. The dry plateau runs around.
Green water cuts the rock.
What is the climate of Kota?
Kota has a hot, dry semi-arid climate. Very hot summers and mild winters cross the plateau, with scorching dry heat before the rains and a short summer monsoon that greens the land. The summer heat grows fierce.
Winter days stay mild and dry.
How do you get to Kota?
Kota lies in southern Rajasthan, on the main line and road between Delhi and Mumbai. Trains and the highway run to it down the plateau from Jaipur and up from the south, and roads run out to the river gorge. Lanes ring the old palace.
Jaipur lies north up the road.
Good for
More cities in State of Rājasthān
Updated August 2026