We stayed one night at this hotel on arrival in India and again on return from Kerala, we stayed three nights. The hotel staff is friendly, the hotel and rooms were clean, although on our return stay, despite having made advance reservation, we were given a small (single) windowless room full of mosquitoes, and with soiled walls. I complained and we were given a better room. But the air-conditioner did not give cool air and noise from the street was unbearable. No double glazing on the windows. strong stench of urine outside reception area. The hotel is located in a very dirty suburb, garbage dumped a few metres away. In a nearby street, chicken were cooped up in small cages with mesh wire and were being slaughtered on the street. The stench was nauseating. It is not an area to stretch and stroll, but to arrive and depart from the hotel. Will neither return nor recommend to a friend.
Mumbai as it is now called, Bombay is a bedlam, pure and simple. The city has no proper roads, no pavements, pedestrians have to risk their lives walking the street or crossing it. This time I saw no cows loitering in the middle of the road, perhaps they had tired of the humans encroaching on their turf. Masses of people bunched together everywhere, doing nothing,
just staring, incredible traffic noise and fumes filling your lungs. We decided to visit Elephanta caves, starting point Gateway of India. It took one hour to reach it, morning traffic was a murder, on arrival we saw huge crowds, eating and drinking, throwing everything on the ground, around themselves. The whole area was filthy. The motor launch agents selling tickets were shouting like touts at a football match, and they all belonged to the same company operating the motor launches. We were kept waiting for one hour untill the launch was overfull, when it seemed that every one had bought soft drinks and potato chips and sat crowding the whole area, as if expecting the start of a show, the launch lurched, heaved and started a sluggish run, overcrowded and overeweight. I was secretly afraid that the launch might overturn, and I would read in the next day's papers about the drowning of two elderly tourists from Germany on an overcrowded launch in Mumbai. But we were spared this wet fate, the Arabian sea was too murky. Once we reached the shore, there was a rickety toy train to take passengers to the entrance of the caves. Then we had to climb more than one hundred steps to reach the caves. Although there were bearers of chairs to take those who wished to be whisked away, the 35oC heat melted all efforts to take one step further. Somehow we reached the summit. Entrance tickets for Indians cost ten rupees, for foreigners two hundred and fifty rupees. In India, historical monuments, temples, places of historical or archeological interest are in total state of abandon, paintings are chipped, statues defaced and not restored, squaters sitting or sleeping, cooking fires going on and cows loitering where Mughal emperors and Indian rajas once sat in splendour. Then back to the motor launch, again a delay of more than one hour in sweltering heat, old couples and small children feeling faint, mothers shouting and every body clamouring for the launch to start. The driver was located at last and we trudged back to Gateway of India. Another hour sitting in the taxi in melting heat, moving at a snail's pace through hundred traffic jams, we reached our hotel. Incredible India.