India Tips & Stays | GRRRL TRAVELER

City Centre Inn Hotel: A decent budget stay in the suburbs of Delhi’s Bhogal

Filed under Delhi, India tips & stays by Christine Ka'aloa on October 9, 2008 at 3:57 pm {no comments}

: A spacious room with AC and two beds. Not digging the wool blankets though. You don’t know what can fester in wool and it’s unlikely the blankets get washed on a regular basis.

(Note: This hotel has been recently renovated in 2011).

Guesthouses and mid-range budget tourist hotels in India are pretty consistent throughout. Despite the price hikes, you never feel like you’re getting much more for your money. The shift in quality is always subtle.

In Delhi, budget hotels run around $6-20 USD/night and if the sheets or towels don’t look dirty, then you’ll get charged for toilet paper or the pillows will tempt smells of someone’s head. By my third night in Delhi, the waft of urine in the surrounding alleys of noisy Paharghanj got to me. I checked out the government hotels in Connaught Place, but the ones I saw looked either, shady and occupied by too many local men or stifling, (more…)

Festival time in Delhi with friends

Filed under Delhi, India by Christine Ka'aloa on October 9, 2008 at 12:06 pm {no comments}

Regina & Sandeep in front of giant Ramlila dolls that will be burnt as part of the festivities

I’ve hired a driver for a day to see Delhi.

For 700Rs (a little over $10 and equal to a OW cab trip from Soho to my apt in Hell’s Kitchen ) this is a bargain! Both Sandeep and Regina are joining me for the day. Sandeep offered his car for this, but I declined. Also, it’s Regina’s last day to sightsee Delhi. We need to see this city!

Tourist sights: Lotus Temple, Hanumayun’s Tomb & Quatab Minar (both to drop R off), the government sector full of government building & the (more…)

Raj’s Cozy Inn Hotel: A decent budget hotel in Paharganj’s backpacking district

Filed under Accommodations, Delhi by Christine Ka'aloa on October 9, 2008 at 11:38 am {2 comments}

raj's cozy inn paharganj

From the outside, Raj’s Cozy Inn Hotel doesn’t look very inviting. But in Paharganj, Delhi’s budget hotel and backpacker district, most hotel welcome mat come stained as a general standard.

Surprisingly, Raj’s Cozy Inn Hotel is not in Lonely Planet’s Guide to India. I found this hotel because the two hotels that were in my guidebook, Hotel Namaskar and Smyle Inn, were fully booked. Hotel Namaskar, referred me to RCI, just around the corner. The hotel itself is smaller with less rooms on each floor, but it was a newer hotel.

The lobby and rooms were clean and bright. My room was fairly spartan- a double-sized mattress w/ fan, TV and western style bathroom- but it (more…)

Lessons of a first-time Solo Traveler in India

Filed under I Survived!, India by Christine Ka'aloa on October 7, 2008 at 11:59 am {no comments}

Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008: Delhi

Back in the U.S., when I was on the road for MTV, I had a GPS, Hertz rental car, a mobile phone with internet access, a 4-5 star hotel with meal stipends and a support office back home working 24/7 for my minute travel questions. Safe to say, I’ve been spoiled a bit.

Here in India, I’m completely on my own– being far from familiar faces, I’ve no tour guides for help; no shoulder to cry on when things go wrong.

When you’re on your own for the first time in a developing country and you don’t have all the conveniences and safe glass bubble partitions protecting you from the outside world, what do you do?

1. Allowing yourself to trust strangers when you travel.

Your mom probably told you to never trust strangers. Well, when you’re alone, often, a stranger is all you have.

Traveling solo is the quickest way to learn how to make friends out of strangers as locals and fellow travelers are your only option for conversation and advice. While this can feel scary and a dangerous gamble, being a foreigner in foreign country, I am reliant upon them. What alternate choice am I given? In these cases I realize, I also have to utilize good street smarts and rely on my intuition to tell me when something isn’t feeling right. (more…)

Hit and misses at Ganapati Guest House (Varanasi, India)

Filed under Accommodations, India tips & stays by Christine Ka'aloa on October 4, 2008 at 11:43 am {no comments}

Nice right? Looks are deceiving

My first room (photo above) in Ganapati Guesthouse was a nightmare (post here)!

It was my first night in Varanasi. After the mess-up with the guesthouse’s shuttle pickup, I just wanted to drop my bags in my room and relax. I had reserved “a room with a balcony overlooking the Ganges River”. It was post monsoon season so it was hot and humid as hell and my room was windowless! Like a sealed-in barn room, my room had one fan, which circulated hot air, two ginormous residential lizards (which I thought were going to swallow me whole) and if that wasn’t enough, the lights in my room attracted a “swarm” of gnats (which eventually swarmed all over my wet items (more…)