Hotel Hell

I had a phase of ‘Gordon Ramsay obsession’ and had been hooked to this show called ‘Hotel Hell’. (It’s a show literally about Hotels similar to hell, which are saved from being bankrupt by Chef Gordon Ramsay) After binge watching two and half a dozen of “Hotel Hell” episodes, featuring several accounts of unbelievably bad customer service, filthy kitchens, gross rooms and Gordon’s insults, I was sure that this show was staged, manipulated or at least severely edited. I couldn’t believe that there were some hotels, a term which makes a majority of us think of luxury, as disgusting as they were shown.

But this idea of mine was soon to be proven wrong.

After an early morning flight, couple of hours of travelling, and an 8-hour shift at the exhibition at which I was volunteering, I pushed myself to pull my 15 kg suitcases for 500 metres to reach my ‘accommodation’. I was super pumped to about my “5 star free lodging” which had supposedly cost our company a hefty sum. Following the trustworthy Google Guru, I walked to ‘the location’ of my hotel in the scorching June heat, only to find two car repairing shops- Santa Car works and Banta repairs. In hindsight, this should have cracked me up but I could hardly conjure up a smile.

On close inspection however, I located a narrow passage between the two shops, and a miniscule board saying “Heavenly Primeà”.  The dingy passage brought me to a semi-broken down lift. Thankfully, i entered the lift, but continuous efforts on my part to close the lift went in vain. Whenever I would press the “close” button, the lift door would appear to open even further. Frustrated, I pushed the “open” button, and miraculously the elevator door snapped shut, and I was whisked to the 2^nd floor.

At the reception, I was greeted with silence. The place was deserted, no staffs were in sight. And surprisingly, all the rooms had doors left ajar. I was half-scared, and was frantically trying to reach my ‘roommate’ and colleague, Rimi. She would take at least a quarter of an hour to reach, and this proved to be the longest 15 minutes of my life. I was thirsty, hungry, sleepy, tired, frustrated and genuinely scared.

Just as Rimi came to the filthy reception, another man, in his twenties, wearing shorts, came down the stairs. He was our shabby, incompetent receptionist, and as I later found out, the only full-time staff employed by the’5-star hotel’.

After a relatively quick check-in, we were handed the keys of our room, ‘R201’. Thankfully, we entered the room and were ready to flop on the bed when things started going downhill. There was a thick layer of dust all over the floor, our bed was devoid of any sheets, cobwebs were hanging from a corner, and to top it all off, a piece of half-eaten bread was casually lying beneath our beds. Our bathroom was an example of disastrous design, with the shower fitted at a height of 5 feet, in a 2 feet space between the sink and pot. To top it all off the bathroom was ridden with muddy footprints.

Desperate as we were for a place to sleep, there was no way that we were sleeping in the “rotten doghouse”. On complaining, a drowsy boy appeared with a broom and cloth to our room. After half an hour, our room was ‘ready’. We still got only one blanket, no soap or shampoo and could see cobwebs hanging over the shabby curtains; but we flunked down on the bed, stuffed Cheetos in our mouth and slept like babies.

We had no reason to get up before eight the next morning, but two calls on the ‘landline’ phone woke us up before the crack of dawn. The first call was a wake-up call that apparently we had scheduled to help us catch a 5 a.m. flight (Which we did not have), and after a shocked exclamation and a ramble of grumbling from our end, the call ended. Just as we started falling back to sleep, the annoying ringtone of the landline sounded again. The next call was a call seeking apology. Receptionist seemed to have muddled up his instructions, and had called us accidently, instead of the other guests they needed to ‘wake up’. In hindsight, this seems to be an honest mistake, but in the eyes of two sleep deprived twenty one year olds, it was the recipe for disaster. We literally shouted at the receptionist, cutting his pleasantries short, and hung up the landline for good.

We could then peacefully sleep for a couple of hours, and it was all smooth sailing till eight in the morning. As Rimi got into the shower, I started trying on outfits. I was standing, half naked, in front of the closet when I heard a weird swishing noise from the other side of the window, and a silhouette of a man appeared on the screen. I freaked out. My scream made an anxious Rimi to dash out of the shower, only to find that a window cleaner had scared the daylights out of me. In my defence, who would expect windows to be cleaned at 8 a.m., that too in the dingy little hotel?

At the Breakfast buffet, we found a ‘mighty’ spread, but a deserted eatery. No server, chef or guest was in sight. Cold Omelette, stale chapattis and potatoes were left in the open, and hordes of mosquitoes hovered above them. After a couple of moments, the cashier entered, took our orders, and proceeded to the kitchen to ‘prepare it’.

Seeing this setup, we felt ready to puke and vowed not to eat here ever again. We cancelled our orders, and were on the verge of asking the cashier to remove our booking, grabbing our suitcases and making a dash for the lift.

We sucked it up for the next two days, and thankfully, exited our ‘Hotel Hell’ in a single piece.

Gordon, I’m sorry for doubting the authenticity of your show. Crappy Hell-like hotels do exist, and have the audacity to name themselves ‘Heavenly Prime’.