Tài Khoản Khách
ngày 30 tháng 5 năm 2024
Every place has its pros and cons, and this place does have its limitations as well - but I’m giving it a five-star because I accepted the bad with the good. First, location is awesome - right on the ghat. Second, room was clean (I got a free upgrade from deluxe to the biggest one they had super deluxe I think). A/c in the room was perfect. Third, food was great. Fourth, service (airport pickup & drop, dining, courtesy of staff) was truly top tier. I would recommend this place in a heartbeat to anyone that’s willing to accept the shortcoming, and there is only one: accessibility to the hotel does require you to navigate 5-ft wide lanes on foot for about 15-minutes after your airport pickup vehicle drops you off at a nearby church. This is not unique to this hotel, cars just aren’t allowed any further. They do send a porter to carry your bag but getting to the hotel (especially between 8:30am and 4pm) does require walking these crowded lanes with your body rubbing against other sweaty bodies of individuals that are in queue to enter into a nearby temple. And not to mention, that motorbikes are allowed so you’re squeezing past these people with bikes in both directions honking their way through the crowd in the same 5-ft wide lane. Again, if you want to get up close to the ghat, this is something you’ll have to endure. There is another option, which I didn’t know of. Another nearby (expensive) hotel does allow transfer in / out of the hotel by boat, which is something I might request next time. It may cost an additional 2000 rupees but is worth it. Regardless, getting from this guest house to just about anywhere else will require navigating these narrow packed lanes (which get worse Friday to Sunday). I did this in peak summer (mid May) so my experience with the streets was a bit icky. Another noteworthy mention is their resident guide service. I believe there are two guides, and I was assigned Sunil Ji, he stays right by the guest house, grew up in Benares and knows the lanes inside out. He was a terrific human-gps, and was great with so many things: he gave me a bike ride from the hotel (navigating the narrow lanes) to a restaurant called Baati Chokka (which was my best meal in town), arranged for a 5am motorboat ride of the Ganges, got me front row seats to the evening aarti, took me shopping to a place that stitched a custom-sized kurta for me in less than a day, and walked with me to every street food joint I wanted to try. I used him for three 3hr sessions over two days for about 6K INR, which i thought was reasonable. He pretty much shaped my experience of Benares. That said, I did find myself wanting to hear more from him about the city, its history, the mythology surrounding the city, etc. When asked a question, he had answers but I had to know to ask the question, which got old after a while. On the contrary, the 40-min drive from the airport with the hotel’s driver Shailendra Ji was so much more insightful and I would ask for him to pic
Dịch