My 'Magic' Journey

I rested with my wife and a friend in this hotel from 01/11/2013 to 01/25/2013, so the impressions are still quite fresh, although the euphoria has already passed. I'll try to be as objective as possible. So everything is in order.

We took a package tour in Kyiv, because we went to India for the first time. In connection with the problems of Aerosvit, I chose the UIA flight, which I did not regret at all. Landing in Al Ain for refueling is a gift from God. And you can smoke to your heart's content, and drink good coffee, and just stretch your legs. Plus an inexpensive Dutik. The only drawback is that they are forced to take all hand luggage with them from the plane for the time of refueling.

The package was taken from "Orbita" with the meeting party "Tara Travel". Vouchers for accommodation at the Lakshmi Place Hotel (as it turned out later, such a hotel simply does not exist in nature, there is a Lakshmi Guest House). Back in Kyiv chose "Lakshmi" because the Indian side of 8 hotels!!! selected earlier within a month, confirmed only him.

In Dabolim, we were met by two Indians with a sign "Tara travel" on a piece of A4 paper, who did not know a word in Russian. After clarifying the names written with errors on a piece of toilet paper, we and two other female travel frogs, who know only “please” in an imported language, were put in an old Mercedes bus and taken to North Goa. The main attraction of the dinosaur corporation "Daimler-Benz" was the air conditioner, which worked in one mode of cooling, and the most powerful one. So after ten minutes of driving, I had to ask Ravik (a representative of Tara Travel) to turn off the air conditioner, otherwise five frozen broilers would have arrived before Morjim :). On the way, I had to take away the bread of the Russian-speaking guide of the meeting party, answering the questions of inquisitive fellow travelers, asking them first to Ravik, who was not very good in English either :)

Finally, after an hour and a half, we were taken to the hotel. To our great surprise, its appearance did not at all resemble the hotel from the photos of the tour operator. And the name sounded not "Lakshmi Place", but "Gurudas House". To the question "Is this from zis ???quot;, Ravik resourcefully and without a shadow of embarrassment on his face explained that here on the coast, everything is "Lakshmi", and this "Lakshmi-Gurudas" is even better, because the room has air conditioning and its territory is fenced . Immediately after that, he quickly jumped into the bus and retreated in an unknown direction, leaving three tourists amazed to the core (one of which, by the way, was a person with disabilities, weak walking) in the care of the hotel staff.

When we were shown the numbers, it became clear that everything that was before was flowers. An anthill was waiting for us in the room, a domesticated frog in the washbasin that can crawl along the walls, tatters of paint and cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, a gas stove with the remains of food from at least a hundred generations of tourists who rested long before us, a bed with traces of biological activity, all those tourists, a menacingly growling air conditioner from the time of my distant youth and an unbearable aroma of mold and something else unfamiliar, exotically nasty, causing pain in the eyes :)

Seeing our dissatisfied faces, the hotel manager proudly declared that the frog has been living in the soul for a long time and does not interfere with any of the tourists. Also, if we are VERY!!! if we want, they will make clean in the rooms, and also advised us to stay in his hotel, since there are no hotel rooms left in Morjim at all and he gives us the last two from the master's shoulder. I am a person, generally humorous, but at that moment I was not in the mood for jokes.

Not believing the esteemed manager of "Gurudas House" at the word, we decided, nevertheless, to find out from the representative of "Orbita" why we were not settled in the booked "Lakshmi" and try to improve our living conditions. Since there was no Internet in "Gurudas" and there was no money on the SIM card of the mobile phone, we decided to find the nearest shek with WI-FI. Fortunately, he was 50 meters from the hotel on the way to the beach, according to the same manager. On the way to the shek, I found the outlines of Lakshmi Place booked by me from Kyiv, painfully familiar from photographs, only with a different name, Lakshmi Guest House (which Orbit modestly kept silent about). We were lucky that the owner was at the reception. With great pride, we immediately handed him the accommodation vouchers issued by Orbita, and confidently declared that we were his guests. After that, the face of the Indian resembled the muzzle of a koala bear :) It turned out that no one had booked anything with him and there were no free rooms in the hotel. After ten minutes of pinning and telling our odyssey in the silence of an Indian evening, four more managers from all neighboring hotels pulled up to us. They smiled sweetly, advised to relax and have fun until they found out the price of the package and accommodation. After that, four more koala bears stood next to us. The owner of "Lakshmi" immediately called back to "Tara" and after a short negotiation, I first heard a swear word in Hindi. Having achieved nothing from them, he led us to the shek, where we contacted via Skype with a representative of Orbita. I don’t cite the content of the conversation, the moderators won’t let it through :)))

After 25-30 minutes, on a scooter, Ravik from Tara Travel, already known to us, rolled up to the neck, dialed and handed us his mobile phone. And about a miracle! For the first time in India, I heard "Hello, my name is Katya ..." on the great and mighty ... It turns out that Russian-speaking guides have not yet disappeared in India. Katyusha asked what happened to us? After retelling our story for the fifth time, I heard a phrase that struck me with its innocence: "So there are simply no places in Lakshmi" ... The content of the further conversation will not be missed by the moderator either. I will only say that I often mentioned the amount paid to Orbita and the distance from Kyiv to Morjim. Apparently, our compatriots, even in India, better understand the emotional intonations in the voice and non-normative turns, because the cute girlish voice immediately promised me that tomorrow at 11 o'clock, she would solve the issue of resettlement and personally come to meet us, and this night is tearful asks us to take you to Gurudas. Since we had no way out, we agreed on this. Looking ahead, I will say that until the end of our vacation, the second part of the promise was never fulfilled.

The next morning, after a hangover with the local rum "Old Monk" (by the way, I recommend it to everyone), we began to look forward to 11 hours. Apparently realizing that the dynamism would not work with us, exactly at the appointed time, Ravik arrived on a scooter and led us to look at another hotel. It turned out to be Naga Cottages. Only when we entered its territory, having not yet seen the numbers, we realized that we would stay here. Before proceeding directly to the description of the hotel, a few more words about the "Orbit" and its meeting side. Departure from the hotel to the airport also spoiled the nerves. In order to be in time for registration, they again contacted Kiev and Orbita. And already in Al Ain, they learned from the girls who flew with us on the forest that Tara Travel had forgotten about them. And they arrived at the airport 20 minutes before the end of registration by taxi after a scandal with a representative of this Indian travel company.

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