Mumbai hotel hell

I thought my return to India was going swimmingly until I got to the hotel I had booked at a kiosk upon my arrival at Bombay airport. The hotel was a steaming shit hole but more about that later. Whereas on my first visit I had disembarked the plane with the kind of fear that a voyage into an India-shaped unknown engenders, this time I breezed along the concourse, a wry smile on my face and a confident swagger in my step. As I swaggered, I recalled with some amusement my previous inexperience and confusion, the stressed-out, sweat-soaked haul from the aeroplane to the immigration desk.

This time it will be different, I told myself. This time I will deal with the cheating hoteliers, wheedling taxi drivers and the apathetic, corrupt officials of Bombay as they need to be treated; with grit, arrogance and disdain – even if they don’t deserve it – in fact, I reasoned, they need to be dealt with in the manner that Indian holidaymakers themselves deal with those who they perceive are there to facilitate the enjoyment of their holiday – I must behave like a bastard for no good reason… in short, I must project strength.

I was filled with an unjustified confidence as I tackled the gentlemen at the hotel booking kiosk and foolishly accepted the first place they recommended without cross-examination and demand for picture proof.

This was my first mistake. On my previous visit to Bombay I had arrived late in the evening and it was close to midnight by the time I made it through immigration. I had managed to befriend a tough Israeli called Alon – the only other westerner on the flight - who was very sceptical of the ardent claims by the kiosk attendants that it was too late to make the two hour journey across town to tourist-friendly Colaba, so we should therefore stay at a hotel near the airport. Thanks to Alon it was very hard work for them to sell us a double room, which seemed to both of us to be at an inflated price. The price didn’t matter to me, all I wanted to do was take refuge somewhere secure and take stock of the crisis situation I had created for myself for choosing to come to such a place as India.

Alon, being Israeli, was not going to accept a price without first putting up a flight. After much argument and expert haggling, my temporary friend of convenience decided to relinquish his scruples for one night and bed down with me in the hotel we were being sold. Blessedly, the hotel turned out to be a nice place and while my roommate was not exactly ideal, at least I was well protected from what I perceived was a clear and present danger of Indians breaking into the room in the middle of the night and robbing me blind. The following morning the free breakfast we were met with as we entered the dining room was exquisite. I gorged myself on all manner of novel Indian breakfast treats and felt content that for this reason alone I had made the right decision in bending my budget on an expensive hotel for one night. Expensive is of course a relative concept in India – my share of the room, buffet breakfast and airport taxi transfers must have been about £10.

This was the kind of treatment I anticipated when I rocked up at the same hotel booking kiosk on this occasion, looking for a place to spend the night. I had it all planned in my head – since I was flying down to Goa the following morning it made perfect sense to spend my first night in Indian at a pleasant hotel near the airport, where I would rest and recuperate after my flight, watch a few movies on HBO and eat fantastic Indian food on my bed. Unfortunately I was far too easy going about the whole process of being sold a hotel. I realise now that I should have been bullish, reluctant, rude and demanding in order to secure a room in a hotel of acceptable standards. I made it too easy for them and in turn they sold me a dud. It was my own fault. I was like a lamb to the slaughter. I think I’m simply too nice to get a good deal in this country.

After a duration in the taxi of such considerable length that it placed the hotel some significant distance from the airport, I stepped out onto a grimy and badly lit backstreet and beheld the building where I would be spending twelve hours recuperating. It was thoroughly soiled and looked like it needed to be pulled down. Inside the reception I was met by a collection of shabbily dressed staff-members, including the cook, who had presumably come up from the kitchen to leer at the fresh meat arriving rather than advertise the specials, which appeared to be splashed generously over the majority of his outfit.

I thought it was funny when I actually saw the room and compared it with the picture I had in my head of what I thought I would get. I was reminded of some of the worst hotel rooms I had spent time in during my last trip to India – everything was there: a double bed, TV, furniture, air-conditioning unit, a bathroom with a shower, western toilet, towel and soap – but it looked wrong, like a hotel room in a horror movie where terrible things have happened over the years and are imminently about to recommence.

I flicked on the TV and the boy who had carried my bag up from reception helped me tune it into HBO. Cocktail was just starting: Tom Cruise was getting stressed out spilling drinks all over the place while Bryan Brown looked on, an endearing and affable twinkle in his eye. Great, I thought, a perfect, trashy movie for me to settle down and watch before bedtime. I was still in a good mood because no serious misfortune had courted me thus far into this latest Indian adventure and although I now realise I shouldn’t have, I accepted the room without too close an inspection, with a resigned sigh and a ironic giggle. What I should have done was raise hell in true Indian style by insulting and shouting at everyone in the vicinity and demanding another room.

I sent the boy away with strict instructions not to disturb me unless he returned with beer and a bottle of mineral water. With some relief I locked the door behind him, settled on the bed and tuned out of reality and into Cocktail: Tom Cruise’s cocktail preparation skills had radically improved, I noted. The boy returned shortly thereafter with a bottle of Kingfisher Strong and was thence swiftly ushered from the room.

Alone for the first time in hours, I finally had a moment to reflect and assess. After a few seconds of reflection upon the room I realised that my initial assessment had been far too generous. Examining the sheets I realised that they were stained and dirty. Examining the towel that had been laid out for me I realised it was stained and dirty. Everything in the room was stained and dirty, even the glass which I was hoping to use for my beer was stained and dirty. I entered the bathroom with some trepidation and raised the toilet seat. It’s interior was stained and dirty. The room had not been cleaned in some time. Dirty, lazy, cheating Indian wankers, I thought, as I promptly tuned back out of reality and proceeded to try and drink my sorrows away with a dusty bottle of Kingfisher Strong. Tom Cruise was chatting [actress name] up in a Jamaican beach bar. Lucky fucker, I thought.

In spite of my crude accommodations, I had a good night’s sleep, lying on top of my cotton sleeping bag and pillowcase, indispensable for the Indian backpacker for exactly these situations. I got up and went to the toilet, absent-mindedly and forlornly attempting to eradicate the shit stains left by a previous occupant with the stream of my piss. I succeeded only partly – the stain had been there for some time. I reflected that the room had probably not been used in about a month, but with the absurdly inflated price I was paying that would hardly be a concern for the hotel owner. It only needed one or two naïve and exhausted western tourists a month to come through the doors to happily keep him in profit.

After I had relieved myself, I showered, even though I had already done so the previous evening. This was not due to any particular obsession with cleanliness, my motivation was clear enough – even standing in the centre of such a room not touching anything for any length of time would invariably make one feel unclean. As I tried to make it back to the bed and into my shoes without touching the ground, the phone rang. I picked it up. The dirty, cheating Indian at the other end told me my taxi was waiting to take me to the airport. Five minutes later I was downstairs in reception, reluctantly handing over the money I owed. I was not happy to be paying a thousand rupees for my twelve hour stint in the shit hole, but I had little choice – I had agreed the price and I had agreed to take the room.

“Fifteen percent luxury tax,” the receptionist said to me, smiling benignly. “One hundred and fifty rupees extra.”
Luxury tax?! On a room with a shit-stained toilet?! I nearly exploded. In fact, I did explode.
“You are a cheating man!” I shouted, “This room was dirty and disgusting! I am not paying that!”
The receptionist was taken aback by my outburst, but he was a professional (crook), he was only fazed for a moment.
“But sir, if the room was not up to your accepting standards then you should have said and we would have glady provided another.”
“But… but…” I stuttered, incredulous, the realisation dawning that I didn’t have any hope of winning this argument. He was right, and while I knew I was being thoroughly ripped off I knew that I was in a strange hotel in a strange part of a strange city and I was entirely alone. There was only one thing to do.

As I scowlingly handed over the cash I noticed a sign on the wall behind the reception desk advertising room rates which tallied exactly with the amount I was handing over, even to the extent that there was a footnote which stated that an additional 15% would be added on top of the total bill for luxury tax. This reassured me at the time and saw to it that my blood did not boil for more than about sixty seconds, but in hindsight I realise that this could have very easily been fixed during the telephone conversation the hotel booking kiosk attendant had engaged in with the hotel staff in rapid Hindi the previous evening. The sign was one of those matte, black plastic affairs with lots of evenly spaced holes and white letters that can be moved around to create a message of your choice – or in this case, quickly adjust the price of a room upwards or downwards… but preferably upwards.

It was only later, as I sat drinking coffee at the airport, that the phrase tourist trap first flitted into my consciousness. How could a hotel of such hideously low standards of quality and hygiene ever hope to be successful? It couldn’t – the place must have been a classic tourist trap, it’s only purpose for existence to make a quick buck from idiots like me. Eventually I discovered from an India veteran that the hotel booking kiosk at Bombay International Airport is a racket involving the local tourism board, an assortment of local hotels of substantially varying quality, the police and the mafia. By this time the unpleasantness of the experience and the sour taste the rip-off had left in my mouth had all but gone – I was sipping cocktails with hot chicks at Goan beach bars and I was able to be quite philosophical about the whole thing. First of all, you live and learn. Secondly, what is a nice guy like me to do with the various powers of local tourism, hotel owners, the police and the mafia arrayed against him? There’s only one thing you can do – smile benignly, turn on the TV – and don’t eat any of the food.