Category: accommodation

Badami accommodation – Heritage Resort

Rs3000 £36
It’s always been a toss up whether to stay in the center of this apparently dusty town – I don’t know, we’e not visited it yet – or to stay 2km outside Badami at this hotel, The Heritage Resort, which is a small hotel with one block with a/c and non-a/c – like ours – rooms, or the nicer looking cottages. The room decision is easy for us: a/c isn’t really required as it’s only 30C here right now, positively cool compared to some places we’ve stayed – and the room we’ve got is a proper 3 bed room, whereas the cottages would need a mattress on the ground, something Amy would prefer not to have.
At the time of writing it was apparently top out of 6 B&B’s – although it’s not a B&B, it’s a hotel – and averaged 4 stars from it’s 233 reviews. Some reviews slated the restaurant here but we’ve just eaten a hearty breakfast and it was delicious, going to prove you should rely on everything you read.

Mysuru accommodation – Green Hotel

Rs3000 £36
Our accommodation in Mysuru, or Mysore as I like to call it, is the Green Hotel, a restored palace originally built for Mysore’s princesses and now run as a not-for-profit hotel. It’s just beautiful to look at and very much reminds me of the Jagat Niwas we stayed at in Udaipur back in 2009. Rated 22nd out of 101 hotels in Mysore on TripAdvisor, it also gets 4 out of 5 with over 330 reviews.

Periyar accommodation – Periyar Inn Homestay

Rs1500 £18
Our accommodation for our 2 night stay near Periyar National Park is in the nearby town of Kumily where most accommodation seems to be. Periyar Inn is a small block of three rooms built in the back garden of a local family’s house, with breakfast served in the main house. I really like the idea of staying in places like this which see money go to local people rather than large multinationals.
On TripAdvisor at the time of booking it was 12th out of 113 B&Bs in the area, receiving 5 stars from its modest 40 reviews.

 
STOP PRESS:
It’s Saturday, we’re meant to stay here for our second/last night but…
We love it so much here that rather take a taxi to Madurai tomorrow we are going to stay here another night and go to Madurai early in the morning the day after. We’ll use the cloakroom at Madurai’s station to store out rucksacks whilst we do some sightseeing.

Munnar accommodation – Green Magic Home

Rs3000 £38
Our accommodation for our single night stay near Munnar belongs to Stanley Wilson whose tour company is doing our two day travel with a car & driver between Kochi and Periyar.
On TripAdvisor at the time of booking it was 7th out of 188 B&Bs in the area, receiving 4.5 stars from its comprehesive 467 reviews.

Kochi accommodation – Walton’s Homestay

Rs2500 £30
Our longest stop of 5 nights on the trip is Kochi (Cochin) and we’re staying at Walton’s Homestay, a small hotel in Fort Kochi and within easy reach of the local sights such as the much photographed Chinese fishing nights. The place has a five-star rating from 304 guest reviews on TripAdvisor, many of whom are repeat customers, and at the time of booking was 11th out of 429 B&Bs.

Kovalam accommodation – KTDC Hotel Samudra

Rs5000 £60
In Kovalam our accommodation is the KTDC Hotel Samudra, a hotel Jane and I stayed in before in 1996 and as our arrival coincides with our 23rd wedding anniversary it seemed fitting to stay here again.
With its views of the sea over the swimming pool and through hammock-supporting coconut trees it’s an easy choice to stay here, once we’d decided to blow our budget a little to celebrate our anniversary..

And to top it off no only have they given us a returning cutomers discount – it was 21 years ago! – but we’ve got the same room too.

Here’s my first pics of the place:


If we’d stuck to budget we would have chosen the Hotel Thushara which is a third of the price at Rs1700 per night.
The only downside for us is that it’s a 1km dark walk back from the restaurants and bars of Kovalam. At the time of booking it was ranked 4th on TripAdvisor and 1st within its class of a mid-level hotel.

Mahabalipuram accommodation – Blue Moon Guest House

Rs1700 £20
In Mahabs our accommodation for 3 nights is at the Blue Moon Guest House, a relatively modern brightly coloured guest house on the edge of town, just a hundred metres from the beach – it’s at the end of the lane on the photo above – and easy walking distance to the Unesco World Heritage site. At the time we booked it it was ranked Number 1 of 29 B&Bs in Mahabalipuram, many people saying how the owner Saravanan made the stay even better.

Mumbai accommodation – Hotel Airport International

Rs4200 £50
In Mumbai our accommodation for two nights is the Hotel Airport International, a fairly standard budget hotel very close to Mumbai’s domestic airport, not too far from the international airport. We stayed here at the end of our 2011 trip, arriving late by a 13 hour train from Goa and departing early for a flight home. We never really saw much of the hotel but it did us very well and I had no hesitation to stay here again.