Description: Dinner was a small buffet of vegetable rice, vegetable curry, jeera potatoes, a chicken dish which we avoided and some 'crispy veg' which had confused us because it was classified as 'non-veg'. The penny eventually dropped that it contained egg in the batter which made it 'non veg' in the Indian definition of vegetarianism. The food was very good but the choice wasn’t very exciting. As far as we could make out there wasn’t any alcohol available though the waiter seemed overjoyed to sell us a couple of bottles of Fanta. The waiters fussed over us with vigour and plenty of enthusiasm which was sweet but rather odd.

According to the hotel’s website, "We have a very spacious and luxurious restaurant where we serve all kinds of food as per your choice (Indian, Chinese, English, continental & American). We have a chef dedicated for English food and we serve full English break-fast round the clock." Our experience suggests that they failed on just about every promise in those two sentences. There was no choice (other than ‘eat it or don’t’), the food in the buffet was all Indian and if there was an English food chef, he wasn’t there. They also say that their restaurant offers views of the mountain but again, you’ll only get the benefit if you go in summer since the mountain is invisible after dark and in the rain. I have to suspect that November wasn’t a time when they were providing full service. The hotel was probably busy for Diwali and Christmas but most of the business would be in the summer months.

You cannot fail to spot that the hotel has lots of inspirational phrases framed and hung on the wall. Over dinner we were suitably inspired by the thought that "Winners don't do different things but they do things differently" and our room carried the words "When you are good to others, you are best to yourself" - wise indeed and well worth remembering. Tony went out with the camera to photograph his favourites which seemed to please the lady downstairs – I hope she never realised he wanted to taunt a few colleagues with them when he got back to work. During his photo taking he met a gentleman and his son on the stairs and got into a long conversation. The man couldn’t believe that foreign tourists had rolled up in such an out of the way place and interrogated him about why we were there, where we’d been, pretty much our entire life histories.

Eventually after dinner and after the second time of asking, a chap appeared with towels and proceeded to spend several minutes doing origami with them on the bottom of the bed so it was clearly worth the wait. Our views were excellent – when it stopped raining – and once all the kids had gone to bed it was pretty quiet in the hotel with no noise from outside except for crickets and other chirpy things.

Breakfast starts at 7.30 but when we went down it wasn't really ready and the guys said it didn't start until 8.30 but they could do toast and hot drinks for us and then they added eggs to our options. Since that's all we wanted anyway it wasn't any big deal that the breakfast buffet wasn't available. An Indian family weren't quite so impressed when they turned up a bit later and had quite a major row with the receptionist when they were due to leave. This hotel clearly can’t deal very well with running things to the client’s timescale rather than their own. They were lucky with us – we had nowhere to go and we weren’t in a rush so it made little difference what time they fed us, but I can imagine for anyone with time constraints it would be horribly frustrating. Our shower had only cold water but I’m not sure why and we didn’t interrogate them. I suspect that it might have been due to the use of solar panels to heat the water since the previous day had been wet or overcast for much of the time so maybe they just didn’t get enough heat.

Checkout caused no problems and the bill was 590 rupees (about £8) for dinner and drinks the night before. I tried to access email on the reception computer but had to give up because it was blocking google which seemed like a pretty extreme thing to do. We went outside when the unhappy Indian family had a bit of a fight about the bill because we didn’t want the owner to be embarrassed about us witnessing it but when they were done we headed back inside. Our driver had gone missing and returned to the hotel in a really stinking temper. He was furious that there were no driver 'facilities' available and that he'd not been able to get breakfast. He was late to pick us up because he had to go off and find somewhere to wash in the village and had waited an hour for a bathroom to use.

Keeping in mind that you really can’t stay at the Windhaven without transport, they really will need to fix the problem with driver facilities. Shijo was in a foul mood all day after the hotel’s lack of facilities meant he was late to get us and I guess he probably had to sleep in the car which can’t have been much fun. Since his employers booked the place he asked us to please complain about the hotel when we sent our feedback forms.

My recommendation would be to not stay here unless you have a pressing need to be in Ramakal as the location is very isolated. It’s probably better to go in the summer and I can imagine that if you live in a noisy, hot Indian city, this place might seem like paradise. For us it was a nice enough building, everything was absolutely spotless and our room was fine. The staff tried their best but there’s not too much they can do about the power problems or the weather. Check before booking whether the restaurant will be fully open and whether they can accommodate your driver. Otherwise – and then only if you want to be miles from anywhere – stay in Thekkady, 40 km away where there’s lots to do.
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