Eating and sleeping in the Indian capital

The highlights, not suprisingly, are not the hotels!

The Indira Ghandi Museum, the Jama Masjid Mosque, and Qatab Minar to the south of the city, are all places I particularly enjoyed. All of these are amazing tourist sites, which are never that crowded as so many tourists seem to avoid the city, wrongly in my view. On my latest trip to Delhi, in Sept. 2001, I particularly enjoyed a visit to the shrine of the 13th to 14th century Muslim saint, Nizam-ud-Din, just south of New Delhi. The huge imperial buildings of New Delhi, built by the British government in the early part of the 20th century and designed by Edwin Lutyens, are a fascinating contrast to the smaller alleys of Old Delhi, and should definitely be seen. Please see my other Delhi journal for details of these places.

Quick Tips:

Air-con hotels cost more, but if you have the money (and they aren't that expensive) I'd spend it - being hot all day is a lot more bearable if you know you can cool down and relax at night. You can also retreat there at the hottest point of the day. My mother and I tended to start the day very early, as many tourist sites open at 6am or 7am, and then go back to the hotel for the hottest time of the day, 11am - 2pm, and then go out again later. We found this worked very well for us, I would recommend it.

Sandals are useful, as they not only keep your feet cooler, but you can take them off more easily at the many tourist sites that demand you are bare-foot.

You must make sure you drink enough – when the heat is intense and you are sweating a lot, thirst isn’t enough to prevent you from getting dehydrated. The first couple of days you are there you need to make a real effort to drink enough water.

Best Way To Get Around:

Rickshaws (cycle or motor) are the way to go, but bear in mind that cycle ones aren't allowed in parts of New Delhi. Consider hiring one for a day or half a day, and you'll save money. Taxis are also common and easily available. We hired one for a day's sightseeing for 500 Rs (about £7). That cuts out constant bargaining, and you can get about faster and have it wait for you in between trips.

When travelling in and out of Delhi by train, bear in mind that trains leave from Old Delhi, New Delhi, and Nizamuddin stations, and you need to check carefully which one you need. Not all trains to the same place leave from the same station – for example, trains to Agra leave from both New Delhi and Nizamuddin stations. When booking tickets, New Delhi’s reservation centre is the most efficient, and can be used to book ticket from anywhere to anywhere in the whole of India.

My mother and I booked this hotel for the first night of our trip to India, 24 hours before we arrived. Like many flights to Delhi, ours arrived in the early hours of the morning, and it was 2am before we got to the hotel. Despite the hour, the hotel’s reception was reasonably efficient, and we got to our rooms quickly.

All the rooms in the hotel have an attached bathroom, with a shower, basin, and supplied small bottles of toiletries. The air-con was quiet, adjustable, and worked well. The room itself contained a desk, chair, wardrobe, TV with BBC World and CNN, two armchairs, 2 bedside tables, a coffee table and double bed. The room was painted white, with a dark green carpet, curtains, and matching bed cover and soft furnishings. The room was a little dingy, and looked as if it had not been painted for a while. My room contained two ashtrays, and smelt rather strongly of old smoke, but my mother’s room did not. If the smell might bother you, ask the hotel to give you another room.

The price of the room included breakfast, which was served in the Coffee Shop downstairs from 7am to 10am. The meal was a rather basic buffet affair, if you don’t like Indian food for breakfast. Apart from spicy foods, only toast and jam was available. The coffee shop is open 24 hours a day, which means that when you arrive you can buy bottled water here for 35 Rs (about £0.50) per bottle.

Outside the hotel, there were taxis and rickshaws always handy, so there’s no need to book transport when you intend to go out. The exterior of the hotel was very scruffy, and looked in need of urgent redecoration, but the inside was in much better shape. Hotels are much more expensive in Delhi than in most of the country, and this one, though not amazing, is fine and reasonable value for money; we paid 2,600 Rs per night per single room including breakfast. It is centrally located, on Connaught Place, which while very convenient is also pretty noisy at night, bearing in mind Indian drivers’ constant use of the horn!

It''s a real find in Delhi, this place. We were recommended it by a fellow traveller, and it beats anything else in Delhi for the same price - I will certainly stay here again when I go back to the city.

The hotel cost us about £3 each, per night. For this, we got a double room, which was air-conditioned, and clean. The air-con wasn’t so noisy that it kept us awake either, which is not always the case in Delhi where you often must chose between being too hot to sleep, and it being too noisy to sleep! The sheets were so new that my friend had to remove a price sticker from hers, which gave the place a very fresh feel. The room had an attached bathroom, with a shower that not only worked, it provided hot water to boot. There''s a good restaurant on site, serving mostly Chinese food, with a few Indian dishes also. They had put one "Continental" dish on the menu, an omlette, which I would avoid, as the chef is definitely better at the Chinese fodder. It makes a nice change in you’ve been in India for a while, eating only Indian food.

The hotel is about 20 minutes north of the Red Fort in old Delhi, by motor rickshaw, which will cost you about £1. The advantage of the location is that the hotel is a lot quieter than the travellers'' ghetto in old Delhi, and you might actually get some sleep at night!

This is where we stayed the first night we arrived in Delhi, and it''s admirably suited for that purpose. It''s nice to have somewhere booked when you arrive on a late night plane (and all international flights to Delhi seem to arrive in the small hours, for some reason!) Delhi is a frantic, busy, and overwhelming place, and therefore it would be foolish, in my opinion, to get off a trans-continental flight without having a hotel booked for the night. It''s expensive by Indian standards, but helps you get over the culture shock of arriving in the mad, bustling chaos of Delhi. The rooms are clean, lots have air-con, and there''s even a pool! Most of the rooms have 2, 4, or 5, beds, segregated men and women. There are some double rooms also. We booked a double room with a bathroom, at 2 days notice, with no trouble. It cost about £8 each, and we reserved the room by credit card. Breakfast was included in the price, and the reception staff, who spoke English, were helpful about train times, and how to book tickets, and which station we needed to go to. Altogether, a helpful, clean, and relaxing place.

This hotel was the place we stayed at the end of our trip, awaiting our flight back to London from Delhi. We arrived here late at night from Agra, our flight having been delayed by some hours. The hotel we went to first, nearer the airport, was full, and we then came further into town to the Ambassador. It was a very good choice – despite our arriving hot, smelly, and tired at 11pm, the reception was welcoming and completed the necessary formalities with the minimum of fuss. We were shown to our single rooms on the first floor – except that single room is a misnomer. My room consisted of a hall, bathroom, dressing room, bedroom and living room – suite would be a better description! The bathroom was tiled white with pink edges, and had a power shower and bath. The toiletries provided were good quality and comprehensive, including not only soap and shampoo but talc, razors and shaving cream, toothpaste and brush, comb, and shower cap. There was even a washing line should you wish to rinse out some clothes.

The dressing room contained wardrobes and drawers, and a fridge with complementary bottles of water. There was also a kettle and tea bags, milk, and coffee. The bedroom had twin beds (my mother’s had a double bed), television with BBC World, CNN, ABC, and the Discovery Channel, and a powerful, easily adjustable air-con unit. The living room had another television, a desk, two 4-seat sofa, a couple of armchairs, and a coffee table, and various magazines and local guides to Delhi were provided. The whole place was newly and tastefully decorated, and the furnishings were universally comfortable. Altogether a very impressive place, I only wish we could have stayed a little longer!

The night we left, our flight was 2am, and we had to check in a couple of hours earlier. The hotel allowed us to check out at 11pm for a half-day’s charge, and we then had dinner downstairs until the time came to take our taxi to the airport. There were other facilities downstairs – safety deposit boxes, with one key given to the guest so that the security is certain (don’t lose it!), internet and e-mail, room service, housekeeping and laundry. The staff were all extremely helpful. Telephone calls could be direct-dialled out, although rather irritatingly direct-dial between rooms was only allowed if the receiving room had a man in it – I therefore had to go through the operator to ring my mother’s room and vice versa.

It’s not cheap, the Ambassador, but neither is it ridiculously expensive, and the facilities and standards make it good value. I would certainly stay again, and will recommend it to my father when he goes to India on business later this year.

The restaurant was air-conditioned, which made it pleasant to come into after a day’s sightseeing. The décor was dark, mostly wood and dark-red wall coverings, table cloths and napkins. As they only lit the candles on each table as people arrived to sit at it, the room was so dark we could hardly read the menu! When we struggled to do so, though, it was worth it.

We had decided not to eat meat or fish while in India, so as to try and escape some of the worst types of food poisoning. On our first evening in Delhi we ate Palak Paneer, and Tarka Dal. The former is a type of soft white cheese, often described on Indian menus as "cottage cheese" It is not the very liquid, crumbly cheese this description would imply, but a slightly firmer mild food which is used in many dishes as a base. This particular spinach dish was spicy and well-flavoured, and the lentil stew and pilau rice went well with it. The food did seem to arrive very fast, and to be hot rather than piping, newly cooked hot, which suggests it is re-heated and that therefore it is a very good idea to avoid eating meat in this restaurant.

With this meal we had a Kingfisher beer and a sprite, and the bill came to 450 Rs (about £6.50 or $ 9.90). The restaurant is on the first floor of the Marina hotel, and is open to both residents and visitors.

The Ambassador serves great food, and it’s well worth coming to even if you are not staying here. There are two main eating places, plus a bar and room service where you can also get food. All except room service are open to non-guests at lunch time and in the evening. The first restaurant is Larry’s, a Chinese eatery. We’d had Indian food non-stop pretty much during our time in India, and a break was welcome. Many places that offer Chinese or "Continental" (European, after a fashion) food in India do it badly, and you’d be better off with the local menu – but this restaurant is the exception that proves the rule. My mother and I both lunched on stir-fried vegetables there, a mouth-watering selection of tiny sweetcorn cobs, baby carrots, green beans of two kinds, okra, and aubergine. Lightly cooked, the vegetables were al dente and served in a subtle and good black bean sauce. The menu has a good choice of Chinese foods from different regions and specialities, including some interesting looking chicken dishes. (We were vegetarian in India to try and escape any nasty food poisoning.)

The service was prompt and efficient, and the bill for the two of us came to about 400 Rs. In the evenings, this restaurant gets pretty busy and it’s apparently a good idea to book a table, or to go and sit in the bar for 20 minutes until a table is free.

Also at the Ambassador, The Yellow Brick Road was something special. And not all good either – the décor was way over the top, actually quite funny. The tables, door and the wood on the ceiling were massively distressed, with wood patches showing through the yellow paint (on seeing the shut door, my mother and I both thought it needed a good clean and some paint, and only realised it was deliberate when we went inside.) The colour scheme was primary colours, very bright, and made you feel as if you were eating in a Kindergarten.

The menus were also a gimmick – set inside a newspaper (pretty tatty) with the food between the articles about Charlie Chaplin etc. We ate two meals here – the breakfast included with the room price, and dinner before we checked out to go to the airport and fly home. Breakfast consisted of a buffet affair, with mostly Indian food laid out but also bacon, omelettes, and various breads. There was also a toaster that provided fresh cooked bread to your taste, and fresh orange and watermelon juice, tea and coffee handy. We made ourselves toast, and ordered hard-boiled eggs. During the 25 minutes they took to arrive, we wondered if they’d had to go find a chicken first, but they eventually showed up.

Dinner here was better organised. We told them we were in a bit of a rush, and got the rice, lentils and chick peas we had ordered within 10 minutes, and the bill immediately when we asked for it. In conclusion, this was an acceptable, but flawed place, and the one thing I felt let down in the otherwise impeccable hotel.