Everyone loves travel stories.
So let's go on a journey to Rajasthan and Goa. There were a lot of fun movements and some not so fun. Enjoy the trip to India.
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Booking at two hotels for the same night seems like a mistake, but there was no error; it was just an escape.
On most of our trips, we look for peaceful locations, sometimes 2 to 3 hours away from crowded, polluted and Instagram-infested cities.
Yet, somehow, we ended up in the middle of nowhere. We had nothing to do except have breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we were booked at this hotel for a whole week.
Partly, this was a problem of our own making.
When we travel, we avoid the cities as far as we can. You'd understand how we make our travel choices if you were to think of a saucer. When most people land in a place, they land in the centre, the big city. That, to us, is the middle of the saucer.
That's where you'll likely find the most activity and touristy things to do. Our travel is more along the rim of the saucer. We locate a place about 2 hours (1oo-150km away) and then start moving around the circumference.
We only return to the city when we need to catch a flight. This “saucer circumference” sort of travel is why we ended up a whopping four hours away from the airport.
1) The place where we were “stranded” was called Bijayniwas Palace.
Bijayniwas might have billed itself as a palace, but that's probably a dodgy term. It had a palace-like look, but it was relatively small if it were a palace.
When we were first given our “upgraded” room, I was slightly taken aback by the strong odour. We walked in, and there was a rather pungent smell. Typically, Renuka gets fussy with any kind of odour. However, she seemed okay with the scent on this occasion, so I went along quietly.
However, the bathroom infuriated her!
Once we'd settled in, she decided to take a shower. When she was done, she complained loudly about the bathroom. I disregarded her complaint because if she is fussy about smells, she is doubly fussy about bathrooms. Imagine my surprise when I went for a shower a bit later.
I found the entire bathroom was flooded with water and had started spilling onto the balcony. This was not a tiny grouse but a bit of a problem in a hotel that called itself a palace.
There were other issues as well.
Despite having several rooms in this “suite”, one of the rooms was just more like a passage to the bedroom. The other rooms were storage rooms, but the cupboards wouldn't open, so there was nowhere to hang our clothes.
If some of the drawers did open, they were musty, and there was no way we would put our clothes in there.
The plug points hadn't been upgraded since 1970.
For some reason, the owners seemed very proud that the plug points looked so old. However, the real issue was that you couldn't plug anything into the wall.
If you wanted to charge your phone or any device, the plugs kept falling out. Eventually, we managed a workaround, but it was a completely unnecessary nuisance.
The owners were utterly clueless.
They are a youngish couple, and the property has been handed down to them by their parents. They weren't flashy in any way, even though they had a brand-new Jeep.
As for the hotel, it didn't seem to worry them that things were falling apart. They seemed to treat the property like a heritage home and that the things that fell apart were part of the experience.
Did I mention there was nothing to do?
We'd already planned our escape. There was one problem: we'd already paid in advance for the place we were already staying at. If we wanted to move, we'd have to pay for the remaining two days at another hotel. In effect, we'd be paying for two hotel rooms simultaneously.
Do you think this decision sounds weird?
Yes, it is bizarre. However, over the decades, we've learned to cut losses wherever possible. We once stayed for a whole week in Denmark in a place that smelt mouldy just because we'd paid for it. We've been to events where we knew we were getting no value and stayed longer than we should.
Life isn't short; there's plenty of time. However, when you're simply spinning and can escape a trap, there's little point in staying where you are. The only problem was that it wasn't easy enough to leave.
The couple that ran the place sensed our frustration and were eager for us to stay. “Do you want to come to the temple with us? Then, you can join us for our local speciality dish: dal-batti.
Since they were making an effort, and we'd never had this local Rajasthani dish, we decided to play along. Plus, it was a dinner invitation, so there was no reason to be rude.
But there was a surprise waiting for us the following day. Renuka always insists on checking all the dinner bills and signing them off. Imagine our surprise when we were billed for the previous night's meal. To us, the way it was presented seemed like an invitation. But clearly, that wasn't the case.
What made it a little worse was that we always had just one dish for dinner. They decided to build us for two dishes. And the price?
It's just a wheat and dal dish, but it was higher than anything on the menu, which was a bit convenient because it was a dish that was not on the menu. Could we have made a fuss about it? Yes, of course, but it's just an experience to learn from.
We were done with Bijainiwas Palace. It was time to move on to the next venue, which, as it turned out, was way more than just a palace. Our average experience at one place led us to discover a gem of a hotel in Rajasthan.
However, there were still surprises, as we'd find out the following day.
2) In the very south of India, in the city of Cochin, is the town of Chittoor.
Over 300 years ago, the Maharaja of Cochin needed a royal residence close to the local temple, which is why the historic royal residence was constructed. The majestic place fell into decay several centuries later until Lady Helen Hamlyn stepped in.
A British philanthropist and arts patron, she has actively restored structures worldwide. She restored many places, including the Château de Bagnois (France), Albarque Fort (Portugal), Nagaur Fort, Magos Reís Fort and Chittoor Kottaram.
The hotel we'd moved to in such a hurry was also because of a restoration project.
A local woman, Lekha Poddar, and her son worked on the restoration of the 18th-century fort, originally built by the area's rulers. Like many once-splendid forts in India, this magnificent home was in ruins.
Crumbling walls, fallen ceilings, and many rooms were open to the sky. Monkeys and birds had made it their home.
The fort needed about 15 years of restoration, but 750 workers completed a large portion of the work in about six years.
The fort/hotel is spread over several acres, yet it has just 39 rooms.
And like all the other places we'd been to, it was peaceful and quiet. However, the peace lasted for just a day.
I was painting in my diary at the restaurant upstairs when someone from the hotel's front desk showed up with some urgency. Earlier that morning, this person had taken me on a tour that lasted well over an hour.
He very proudly described many of the suites within the palace. However, his voice was not calm as he requested that we move to another superior suite. “Choose the suite you'd like, and we can move your luggage across.”
Since he'd already shown me several rooms, he thought I'd be able to make a quick choice.
However, I wanted Renuka to decide which roof she'd prefer. Renuka likes her siesta, so I assumed she'd be fast asleep. My phone lit up minutes later, and Renuka said: “We have to move rooms now!”
I could barely figure out what was happening, and when the hotel's general manager was keen, we upgraded our room immediately.
Only then was I told what was really happening.
A group of people from the bordering state, armed with boxes of snacks and cartons of beer, had booked ten rooms. They were so loud and didn't bother to tone down their volume even a bit.
Plus, they were trampling all around the property, playing cricket, shouting, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.
The hotel was highly proactive in its decision-making.
They isolated the noisemakers to one part of the property and moved us to the royal suites. Thanks to the nuisance factor, we got a room that wasn't just an upgrade but was one of the finest ones in the hotel. How do I know? I did the room tour earlier, remember?
We were extremely pleased with the way things had turned out. However, sadly, we had to move on. It was time to head southwest to Goa.
3) For most tourists, Goa is a wonderful place.
Compared with the intensely hectic nature of most Indian cities, Goa has a feeling that's hard to describe. Though Goa is predominantly Hindu (66%), it looks very Catholic, with almost 150 churches and hundreds of chapels.
The orangish-red colour of laterite stone is predominant, and old Portuguese villas dot the landscape. Add an almost endless array of beaches and mouth-watering food, and you have a pretty good idea why it's been a place of refuge seemingly forever.
That's the Goa I knew as a child—not the Goa of today.
My parents (and now the rest of my family) live in Goa, so I make the journey there more out of duty than delight. I was pleasantly surprised when we got to our boutique hotel. Empty, quiet streets surrounded the hotel.
The forest still crowded out the houses, and birdsong was everywhere. I couldn't believe how I'd felt like I'd returned in time.
Then, the hot weather stepped in.
It was early March, and the temperature was already hovering at 5°C, which was more than usual. The searing heat of 37°C was matched by intense humidity, making the “feels like” temperature seem like 47°C. Even so, I'm fine in extreme cold and heat. Renuka, on the other hand, can't handle either.
Within hours of our arrival, Renuka's head and eyes began to swell.
By the next day, she was ill. However, it wasn't her alone. Many locals unused to the soaring heat this early in the year, were often much worse. Then, it was my turn. Whatever bug Renuka had picked up was now also my problem.
The car we'd rented for five days sat forlonly in the courtyard as we spent most of our time in a room where the airconditioner struggled to keep things cool. We weren't horribly sick, but in no mood to go anywhere in a hurry.
It may sound like we had a terrible time, but it wasn't so bad after all.
For years I've almost hated the thought of going back to Goa. Even if others around me find it to be amazing, it was something that I coudln't reconcile with.
In fact, if my parents weren't living there, I'd have skipped that location completely. Yet, this time around, the hotel and its environs changed my mind. It made me feel like wanting to go back, if only in cooler months.
People go on holiday for advanture and sightseeing.
We go on vacation to do nothing and yet the adventure tags along anyway. And that's what I love about holidays. If everything goes your way, your holiday stories are boring. When things bounce a bit, you can still have a great time and the memory of the crazy bits stay with you forever.
I can't wait to go back to that peaceful, crazy existense 🙂
