How do you know its the off-season in an Indian hotel? You discover that not only are you the only white tourists, but you are the only guests in the entire hotel! The rest of which appears to be under renovation including jack-hammers, paint fumes, gasoline smells, and vast tracks of empty gardens. It is, however, VERY quiet at night and the room is clean.
I must admit I began to wonder just how much of a "good deal" I had discovered on the internet when not only the pre-paid taxi dispatcher, but also the gate guard and the taxi driver himself had clearly never heard of the hotel name. As a result, we circled around various Delhi highways asking random people walking by the side of the road if they knew where the hotel was. Hmm. The website's colorful pictures of people frolicking in a large swimming pool with a swim-up bar was enticing. The reality, glimpsed through sheets of monsoon rain, of empty leaf-dappled pool water and not a martini in sight, was enough to send me back to our blissfully air-conditioned room to write this blog.
Tomorrow, plane tickets, visas, and weather allowing, we fly into Bhutan. Apparently, its a bit of a crap-shoot during the monsoon since the Paro airport is sight-only landing and if the clouds have filled the valley they cannot land, in which case, we will be flown back to Delhi in search of another hotel to spend the night. Fingers crossed!
I must admit I began to wonder just how much of a "good deal" I had discovered on the internet when not only the pre-paid taxi dispatcher, but also the gate guard and the taxi driver himself had clearly never heard of the hotel name. As a result, we circled around various Delhi highways asking random people walking by the side of the road if they knew where the hotel was. Hmm. The website's colorful pictures of people frolicking in a large swimming pool with a swim-up bar was enticing. The reality, glimpsed through sheets of monsoon rain, of empty leaf-dappled pool water and not a martini in sight, was enough to send me back to our blissfully air-conditioned room to write this blog.
Tomorrow, plane tickets, visas, and weather allowing, we fly into Bhutan. Apparently, its a bit of a crap-shoot during the monsoon since the Paro airport is sight-only landing and if the clouds have filled the valley they cannot land, in which case, we will be flown back to Delhi in search of another hotel to spend the night. Fingers crossed!
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