Hotel Monarch Mussoorie

I went to Mussorie last weekend with family. We had reservations at Hotel Monarch. Apparently some friend's relative's relative owns the hotel so my parents had booked two rooms there for backup, in case we didn't find any other hotel. The room cost was Rs. 2200. They said that they would give a ten percent discount and breakfast free. On our way, we started getting calls from the hotel to check whether we would be staying at the hotel indeed. My dad bought some time, he thought we could look at couple of other hotels too. We should have really figured that something is wrong with Hotel Monarch, given their desperation.

Anyhow, we reached on the Landour side of Mussoorie and checked the Jain Dharamshala. It is supposed to be good. My aunt is a Jain so she could have gotten rooms but the place was completely full. The rooms cost about Rs. 200 a day. After this, we found a sort of agent who took us to the Himalayan Club. He showed us two kinds of rooms, one kind was for Rs. 1320, but it was small; the other was huge and great and it was for Rs. 1800. However, only one of the bigger rooms was available for two nights, the other one was available for just one night. At that time we thought that we'd stay for two nights. My dad tried to bargain but they wouldn't agree so finally we thought we might as well go to the "good" hotel we had reservations in and take advatage of the free breakfast. Bad decision.

We reached the other side of the Mall Road, climbed a steep slope to get to the hotel and the rooms turn out to be smaller than the small rooms at the Himalayan Club that we were getting for Rs. 1320. The breakfast was not free, apparently he said that they had never said anything like that! Unfortunately, we were way too tired to go back to Landour so we just took those rooms.

Hotel Monarch is probably the WORST hotel in Mussoorie. The rooms are tiny and suffocating. The room service is pathetic. The sheets were dirty. The bathrooms were dirtier. There were no blankets. After much argument, we got a torn blanket. After we checked in, instead of asking if we would like tea or water, their receptionist kept calling to ask us to go and give the advance as though we would just run away. Alas! We should have run away! When we asked for an extra bed in a room, we got a tiny dirty mattress that we sent back. We ended up with three people sleeping on their tiny double bed that so damp, it could have been wet. The next morning, the hotel ran out of hot water. There was no hot water for an entire hour! Our trip got delayed because of this. Worst hotel. Worst infrastructure. Worst service. It doesn't even have 24 hours room service.

Because of the suffocating and discomfort, we decided to check out the next morning, do some tourist things and head back home. So on Saturday night, we were back home after a trip to Mussoorie in less than 24 hours.

My advice - stay clear of this hotel if you ever go to Mussoorie. They have other hotels too - Landour Manor is one of them. It would probably be as bad.

P.S. - I asked them for a feedback book. Obviously, they didn't have this either.