A tale of Yaks - and Tails (Hotel Yak Tail (Leh, India))

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	Hotel Yak Tail (Leh, India)
Date:	15/04/09 (152 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A very different and very unusual type of hotel

Disadvantages: You'll need a sense of humour to get the most out of this place

In July 2006 my husband and I had a fabulous holiday trekking in Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas. It's taken me nearly three years to get dooyoo to add the hotel to the database - hoorah, at last I can tell you about this fun little hotel.

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If you are travelling to any of India's major cities you will be spoilt for choice when it comes to finding a wide variety of hotels - old or new, large or small, everything from an international 5* standard through to the doss house of your worst nightmares. They are all out there and depending on how deep your pockets are and how much patience you have with hotel review websites, you'll almost certainly find something to suit.

If, like me, you like to do your homework and know a bit about the hotel you are going to stay at, it's easy to find out lots of information before you go to a big city. But what about when you get more off the beaten track to a city that Expedia and Traveladvisor haven't heard of? To a city without a single international chain hotel - no Hiltons or Marriotts, not even a Holiday Inn? Surprisingly (and thankfully) these places do still exist and some of them (praise be!) don't even have a MacDonalds.

If that's the sort of place you want to visit then you'll have to take a bit more of a step into the unknown. At best you'll have to rely on guidebook recommendations which can be very out of date or the opinions of travellers who have been there and written up their thoughts in review sites.

This review is about a hotel called the Yak Tail on Fort Road in Leh, the main city of Ladakh. Those of you who have had the odd twinge of envy at some of my 5 start hotel reviews, won't need to hate me quite so much after reading this one. But despite its sometimes rather unusual and idiosyncratic features, it's a nice little place and not one to dismiss without reading on.

~A Few Facts about Ladakh and Leh~

* Leh is the capital of Ladakh, a district of Jammu and Kashmir, in the northernmost part of India.
* Ladakh is a high altitude desert with most of its villages and towns at altitudes of 3500m or more.
* The summer tourist season is very short and is controlled by the melting of snow which opens up the two main land routes - the Srinagar to Leh Highway and the Manali to Leh Highway.
* Leh is the centre of Ladakh's popular trekking tourism industry.
* The main religion in Ladakh is Buddhism and there are lots of fabulous fairy-tale gompas (monasteries) to visit.
* The region is known affectionately as 'Little Tibet'.

~Why were we in Leh?~

My husband and I went to Ladakh as part of a package trip with Exodus, one of the UK-based adventure tourism specialists. We were going for a fairly easy four day trek and needed to spend a few days acclimatising to the altitude before we started to walk. Exodus had booked us into the Hotel Yak Tail on Fort Road in Leh for three nights at the beginning of our trip and another night after we'd been camping.

~Where is the Yak Tail? ~

The hotel is on Fort Road in central Leh and claims to be the oldest hotel in the city. It's tucked between a rug shop and a bureau de change, just opposite a little arcade where you can get your hair cut, have a snack and book a trek. It's a block or two from the central square and just a block from the Tibetan market. Within spitting distance you can find restaurants, the world's slowest internet cafes, great bakeries and more tourist curios that you'll ever need.

~First Impressions~

I burst out laughing! I think it might have been the way they had 'astroturfed' the courtyard. It might have been the frilly striped cheerleader 'skirts' hanging above the windows, or possibly the beach style Pepsi umbrellas. It could have been the giant bean-stalks. Whatever it was I was giggling fit to burst and trying very hard not to splutter.
The hotel is laid out around a central courtyard - home of the lurid green astroturf. The building facing you as you enter is the oldest part of the structure and apparently this is the only part where they let rooms in the winter months because the walls are thicker and it's easier to keep it warm. The 'new' rooms are laid out on two floors around the courtyard. My guidebook says they have 14 rooms but it seemed a lot bigger - but my guidebook is an old one I got cheap in a remaindered bookstore so it could be out of date.

To your left as you enter is a breakfast room/restaurant which bizarrely isn't attached to the kitchen. I couldn't help but wonder how they would get food from the kitchen to the restaurant in the depths of winter. The Reception is ahead and slightly to the left and to the right are the stairs to take you up to the first floor. If it were not for the astroturf and the beanstalks and the skirts, it would look a bit like an American small town motel -without the cars of course.

~The Welcome~

Considering that we arrived at about 7 o'clock in the morning, the welcome was warm - the weather wasn't. The staff seemed determined that it was summer and insisted on serving a light breakfast under the sun-umbrellas. We didn't see any women staff the whole time we were there and most of the workers were smiley young chaps. We filled in some registration forms, parted with our passports for a while and drank lots of bad coffee.

~The rooms~

We climbed the steep and rather irregular stairs to the first floor - it seemed easier than tackling the beanstalks but at 3500m altitude even a single flight of stairs needs to be taken slowly and gently for the first couple of days. At the top of the stairs there was an open balcony shaded by the greenery of the aforementioned bean plants. Our room was the first on the landing next to the staircase. On the landing there were cane chairs and a small table and green carpeting in a similar shade to the astroturf.
Logically the astroturf courtyard should have prepared me for what was to follow when we got to the rooms but I was soon racked with another set of giggles. On opening the door my thought was 'I've died and gone to Bratislava in 1993' - that was the last time I'd seen a room to compete with the visual feast of our room at the Yak Tail.

So many patterns, so little harmony between them. The curtains - beige with shiny patterns; hanging very badly and blocking about as much light as a net curtain. The carpet - brown and swirly. The sofa - brown velour. The coffee table - vintage 1970s. The bedspread - blue and swirly. And furry too. There were built in cupboards and non-matching bedside tables as well. It looked like your worst student bed-sit nightmare. Not one thing really went with another thing in the room. But it was fun - and surely the least pretentious hotel room of all time. And the room was big enough for us and all our camping gear so we weren't bothered at all.

The lights above the bed were wired as only an Indian electrician can wire. (An aside - when Prince Philip made the boo boo of commenting that the wiring in a Birmingham factory he visited looked like it had been done by an 'Indian' he wasn't mistaken. He had to apologise and claim he meant a cowboy but we knew what he really meant). In fact electricity was a bit of a mystery the entire time we were in the Yak Tail. There was always a random element of surprise about whether the lights would be working, whether the TV would have any juice and whether the whole lot might unexpectedly come on in the middle of the night. In the winter months Ladakhi homes only have electricity for 5 hours a day - in the evening, when it's dark - and it's forbidden to waste electricity on something as unimportant as heating. When it's feet deep in snow outside your window you must burn wood or animal dung - electricity is too precious to waste.

The only problem we had in the rooms was with the bedding. The bed was two singles pushed together - not a problem and quite normal in India. However, each bed had heavy, fairly dense quilt and a sheet. The sheets weren't tucked in and in the course of the night the sheets and quilts got so tangled that we had to resort to getting our sleeping bags out on two of the nights.

~The Bathroom~

Maybe this should be in the general room section but really it deserves more attention than that. The bathroom was project worthy of a visit from DIY SOS. It was large and more or less clean. And the water pressure was good - although there was only hot water for a few hours in the morning and the evening.

The bathroom was tiled to shoulder height on three walls. The fourth wall was not tiled. It looked like a bit slab of plasterboard nailed to the wall. There were electrical cables running all over it as though someone had forgotten to finish the job.

Although the shower was very 'open plan' the bathroom was big enough that you didn't have to worry about the toilet roll or the loo seat getting soggy. All the water sloped off to a drain under the sink. The water from the sink emptied into this same drain via a pipe so you needed to wear flip flops in the bathroom when having a wash or the water splashed over your feet when you took the plug out. Actually I'm exaggerating a little - there was no plug and I, as usual, had forgotten to pack the travel plug.

~Mealtimes~

As the Yak Tail is apparently run by Basil Fawlty's Ladakhi cousin, we were never sure what to expect at meal times. On the second morning it was fairly predictable - cornflakes with (hot) milk, followed by omelettes and toast. Fairly standard fare. Third morning porridge and eggy-bread with hot pickles. Next morning things got strange - plain yoghurt and aloo paratha (a bit like spicy Irish potato bread) with pickle. As this received a cool reception the staff rushed off to make toast and too many eggs which nobody could eat because they'd stuffed themselves with potato bread not realising there'd be an alternative.

Lunches were available and were very good value at just a few pounds for a starter and main course. They served a mix of Indian and Chinese food. We had a set meal one evening which bounced around the world for its carbohydrate inspiration - starter was chips followed by pasta and curry with lots of naan and rice. These guys knew we needed trekking food to build us up. That meal was 250 rupees - just over £3 a head.

You can get drinks and snacks in the courtyard pretty much whenever you want them. These guys are very flexible

~Other services~

Laundry - we left laundry to be done whilst we went trekking. We thought it would be nice to return from 6 nights in tents and have some clean clothes to wear. When we returned they were still at the laundry six days later. But when they did come back, all the clothes were clean and neatly pressed and the service was inexpensive.

Phones - they have phones in each room. We didn't use them but I assume you could if you wanted to.

Travel - if you needed travel assistance, they have a small office that can make arrangements for you.

~So what does it cost?~

We were on a package but I'm led to believe that B&B costs £15 to £20 per room per night.

~Would I go again?~

Despite mercilessly taking the mick out of the astroturf, yes I would. When we got back from camping the Yak Tail was looking like a veritable palace. It was noisy at times - someone was building across the road from our room - and the service was chaotic but after a while it felt like home. Nothing was very expensive, the location was ideal and we were well, if a little erratically, looked after.

~An aside about Yaks - well why not?~

Yaks are high altitude beasts generally found above 5000 m. They are some kind of weird sub-species of cow from what I could make out. They are exceptionally hardy but they don't really like the lowlands - maybe too much oxygen gets them light-headed. Yaks can breed with regular cattle and the offspring are called Zho (if they are boys) and Zhoma (if they are girls). The Zho are infertile but the Zhoma are capable of having little yakky-zholets. Zho(ma) are very hardy so the farmers drag the yaks down to lower altitudes to have their way with their cows and produce hardy little furry critters that are well suited to the cold weather. Is any of this relevant to a hotel review? No not really, but you will find that everyone you meet in Ladakh will get around to telling you about Yaks sooner or later and this may help you to look very clever when it happens.

~An even- further-aside aside~

When I was a student at a largely male college, a widely used term of admiration amongst the young gents (who'd spent too much time in the showers) was 'he's hung like a yak'. I have since failed to find this term used by anyone else so maybe it was just one of those college things. One Easter a bunch of us idealistic young students took a group of what were in those days called 'underprivileged youngsters' (today they call them ASBOs) away on holiday for a few days. We took the group to one of the safari parks which, as luck would have it, has a yak enclosure. All the student volunteers could be seen peering at the boy yak's undercarriage to see if yaks really were well hung. The answer is that they are actually so hairy that I'm still none the wiser. But I have to say the lady cows didn't look unhappy!

Summary: Fond memories.