Nirula's - if you're ever in Panipat (Hotels in India in general)

Member Name: RotweilerC

Product:	Hotels in India in general
Date:	02/12/03 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Near workplace, Telephone lines work

Disadvantages: Very basic

You have to remember which continent you are staying in and the relativity of things...so please bear that in mind when I describe my experience at Nirula's (or Le Gem, as it was known originally)

The travel aspect of getting to Panipat I will save for another op some day when my hands stop shaking, but it is a long two hour drive from New Delhi. The hotel is on the far side of Panipat, so the hustle and bustle of Panipat is experienced before heading towards the outskirts of the town. Whatever you might say about India, it is unique and should be really experienced at least once in a lifetime in a personal manner (or put another way, not experienced from the wrong end of a call centre telephone line!) Easy to find fault from a Western perspective, but the way things still manage to happen and get done, in such a chaotic environment, is rather endearing. I love the lorries with the "Horn Please" on the back...please can we have that in the UK??

Getting to the hotel is a challenge, given the incline of the slope to get to the front door. The car took three attempts since it kept slipping with the dust on the tiles, but get there we did. Still, patience is a virtue very much in presence in India.

On my first visit there was a guy outside the door in very "Raj" orientated dress, who would open the front door and salute. Not sure what hppened to him with the new owners, but it was a different welcome.

Inside was cool and lofty, with a waterfall rock sculpture facing the reception desk. I always had an overwhelming urge to put shampoo in it for some reason, but never did. The desk was always manned by at least three people who were always friendly and helpful. Trying to get an outside line was always a challenge, since you had to write the full number down on paper at reception, then go to your room and wait for the call...sometimes up to an hour! Check in was fairly easy, but it is always advisable to have larg
e quantities of the photo page of your passport when you go to these hotels.

The rooms themselves were....Hmmm. Lets turn it around, they weren't like a Hilton or a Hyatt, but they were OK (ish). The history of the previous occupants was littered around the wall in the form of blood samples together with squashed mosquitos, but we'll come back to them in a bit (They certainly came back to me enough times!)

There were curtains, but you didn't want to touch them too often or open them - the window had a tint of sepia colour (or maybe old nicotine) but that was it, so the curtains kept the room cool. There was a coffee table and a fridge and a couple of chairs, together with a cigarette burned desk. The room had "central air conditioning", the mosquito equivalent of the M1 motorway but with gourmet fast food joints (me and other hotel guests) The bed was...lumpy?...tired?...old enough to be my conception ground? All of these and more besides...

The bathroom - got to know this quite well on several occasions. Shower was like the telephone, in that you started it, then periodically checked back to see if there was any warm water and it could be a while too. Bizarre isn't it - you have air conditioning to cool the room and then want a warm shower...The sink was clean but the maid insisted on putting urinal cakes into the plug hole. If you have ever run warm water over one of those things and put your head near it, boy, does it make your eyes water. That was an ongoing grudge match, I would dump them into the toilet and the maid would replace and increase the quantity. On the plus side, the toilet was always spotless after her visit..no, don't go there, I know what you are thinking!!

The television had lots of channels, but only one I could understand which was Star Movies. To get any news, you relied on the paper, the Times of India. Nice breakfast paper...especially the cartoons. Dubyaman, where are you? <
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There was a bar in the hotel where you could get a SandPiper or Black Partridge (Haryana beers) and you could also get something to eat (but in the restaurant, you couldn't get anything to drink!) I made the mistake of asking for a recommendation of a light snack and I swear I can still feel the tingle now.

The restaurant was OK, the menu went downhill (very western) on the later visits. Initially there were so many local varieties of curry and vegetarian foods available that you never got bored (I'm not a veggie but I enjoyed them) but on later visits everything was pizza, Chinese and more prone to giving food poisoning, from personal experience. Chicken was obviously fed a staple diet, it still had them in it whilst on my plate.

Back to the mosquitos. I woke up one night with an itch on the side of my face and rubbed it..big mistake. Blood on my hands, scratch one mossie, but that was me with my own personal Mount Vesuvius on my face for a week. Turning on the light and there was another so fat with blood he couldn't lift off and was having his post dinner snooze on my pillow!!!
I tried swatting all the mossies in the room before I went to bed but they came through the cooling vent - so I invested in one of these vapouriser killers. The thing probably loaded me with toxins, but it sure wiped out the mossies!!

The room I had was an Executive room. It was paid for by our Indian affiliate and to them was hugely expensive. To us, that's about £16. For an additional £11, you can have the Presidential. That comes with mossies who wipe their feet and wash their hands first!

Everything is relative - compared to some of the people up the road, I was very lucky to stay where I did - you have to remember that at times - I was only there for a few weeks and got to come back home again. Nirula's is an interesting place to stay and to be recommended at least once!

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