DesiTraveller

  Breakfast buffets at Indian hotels are probably the best means of sorting out what the F&B experience will be like at their other restaurants. Unlike with hotels in many countries abroad, the Indian breakfast buffet is usually largely vegetarian, with an egg and dosa counter, as well as a token display of cold cuts and sausages. Marked, usually, with an absence of pork. What are the points to look out for with a breakfast buffet in India? 1) Go for the pre-boiled eggs. Crack one open. The rest of the egg adventures will depend on the colour of the yolk inside and how fresh the egg tastes. If the boiled eggs served are lousy, then the rest of the breakfast is also, probably, a collection of lowest bids. 2) Check out the idlis. If they are fresh-steamed, plus points, but if they are lying sadly neglected in some sort of serving apparatus, then once again you realise that the typical Indian star hotel truly has not learnt anything from the many Indian vegetarian restaurants on t...

  This is probably the first and most important question that needs an answer, documented in writing, before even thinking of making a reservation. The second question which I am adding after an experience at a property owned by one of India's biggest hotel chains is - do you have silent generators or what? We are on a bit of a West Coast of India drive as I type this. Highways are mostly brilliant, except ghat sections which have borne the brunt of higher traffic and stronger monsoons, and toll booths which are a disgrace to everything we stand for in India in context with cleanliness and good behaviour. Toll booths will be a separate article, post, essay - on how the typical behaviour especially towards those without FasTags continues to be that of extortion based collections.  Almost all hotels in India make a sizeable part of their revenue out of functions of all sorts. From early morning through till pre-dawn, and so be it, which is probably why room rates and breakfast a...

Simple fact - in context with tourists from any country in the world - very few, if any, will admit to having been made a monkey of on an expensive trip to another country. This is a universal truth, and the reasons are not far to see - most do not know anything about the destination unless they have really researched the destination. In our context, whether inbound or outbound India, especially after paying out big fat visa fees. And if they have researched the destination well, then they will certainly have steered clear of all the relevant tourist traps, something many of us learnt early in life. For example, take coastal beach tourist towns anywhere in the world, and start from the restaurants which are right on the beach. Broadly, these can be defined as "greedy row", where everything is over-charged or watered-down or both. On the second street from the beach-front are usually the back-ends of the restaurants on the beach-facing row. Prices may be lower, but then also b...

  Destination weddings, or destination functions of any sort, are amongst the biggest evolutions of package tours without the tours. In most cases they comprise of taking a flight plus some other form of transport to a resort or a hotel, attending expensive choreographed functions, and then returning back to base. Getting wasted appears to be, often, one of the core objectives. Trying to imitate a random Hindi movie is another aspirational here. In almost all cases, all that this achieves is travel inside another tube, and food that tastes the same. In addition, your budget is likely to go totally out of shape on basics like drinking water and airport food, because those are not cheap. I have done a few destination weddings, in addition we also live in a second home sometimes in an Indian city which has a lot of destination weddings, so there is a wee bit of experience involved too. Destination weddings abroad are something else again. Here I try to tell readers how a good quality ...