Hotel Madonna, New Delhi

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Finding a hotel in Delhi is never a simple matter. At one end of the scale you have the super-luxury international 5-stars for those with deep pockets or company expense accounts. My favourites (both reviewed before) are the exquisite Imperial and the attentive Oberoi. Both can compete with hotels anywhere in the world. If you can afford them, they'll spoil you rotten but at busy times of year, you'll not see change out of ...
...find something tolerable or your hotel might be in the 'hot and cold running cockroaches' category. As one local guy said to me "in these places the tourists are scared to use the toilet".

What most people want is something that's somewhere in the middle; a place that won't cost you an arm, a leg and a few organs but also won't give you dirty sheets and a nasty infection. They also want to be somewhere that's accessible ... more

The Challenge
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Finding a hotel in Delhi is never a simple matter. At one end of the scale you have the super-luxury international 5-stars for those with deep pockets or company expense accounts. My favourites (both reviewed before) are the exquisite Imperial and the attentive Oberoi. Both can compete with hotels anywhere in the world. If you can afford them, they'll spoil you rotten but at busy times of year, you'll not see change out of £200-£400 a night. In the high-end category you'll also find some distinctly 'ordinary' hotels as well - the Siddarth is a great example of over-priced and under-equipped Delhi hotels. The top of the range hotels can be a bit of a bargain if you are willing to visit in the stifling summer months but for most of us they are off limits at peak times of year.

Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, you'll also find a lot of choice for under £20 a night - sometimes even just a few pounds. But just how much of a risk are you willing to take? If I have two weeks I don't want to spend half my time squatting over a toilet or throwing up. From an international perspective, these budget hotels are targeting the year-out hippies whose standards may have been modified by several months of roughing it. You might get lucky and find something tolerable or your hotel might be in the 'hot and cold running cockroaches' category. As one local guy said to me "in these places the tourists are scared to use the toilet".

What most people want is something that's somewhere in the middle; a place that won't cost you an arm, a leg and a few organs but also won't give you dirty sheets and a nasty infection. They also want to be somewhere that's accessible to the city centre and the tourist sites - not 20 miles away in a suburb that's mis-sold as being central. The £30-80 per night range is a bit of a gap in the market.

Before I go any further I know that a lot of you will be thinking "surely India is dirt cheap, that sounds like a lot of money". Well yes, it's true, dirt is cheap and there's a lot of it about. Hotels in many cities are ridiculously cheap but this it the nation's capital and the prices are on a par with most European capital cities.

In November we spent just over two weeks in India - myself, my husband and our friends Dal and Kuljit. The more IT literate of us - myself and Dal - split up the tasks of hotel hunting between us. I hunted down the hotels outside of Delhi and he covered the more harrowing job of finding a place in Delhi. The Delhi target was to find something for £30-60 per night. I know the layout of Delhi really well (and I've got the maps) so between us we narrowed down the options and he plumped for the Madonna. This ensured that if it was really awful, I could blame him.

Why the Madonna?
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The price was good - $83 per night including taxes (always make sure the taxes are included in Delhi as they can add a LOT to your bill) was not so low as to make us worry about the quality but not too high to blow the budget. By booking direct with the hotel we were able to get a price that slightly beat all the on-line booking agencies AND got a free airport pick up thrown in as well. The other benefit of booking direct was we didn't have to pay in advance so if it was truly awful we could always leave early.

The location was excellent - just a 5 minute walk to the Metro Station and close to (but not IN) the Karol Bagh area. KB is the area where most of the really budget places are and we wanted to avoid it. We once stayed in a hotel round there that no taxi-driver in the entire city had ever heard of despite it being on such a busy junction that a 24-hour serenade of car horns was the background music to our stay.

The website made the place look clean and tidy and it was clear that the hotel had been refurbished fairly recently. Hubby said the photos of the lobby made it look like a used car show-room and in reality, he was probably right. It looked just like that.

Arriving
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Our flight landed in the wee small hours of the night - about 2.30 a.m. once we'd cleared immigration and got our bags. The driver was waiting for us with our friend in tow. Dal and Kuljit had flown over 12 hours ahead of us and for some daft reason Dal had decided to stay up and welcome us. The driver didn't have a hotel sign board or our names so I'm not sure if he could have found us if Dal wasn't with him. The car the hotel had sent was ridiculously small - it's not like they wouldn't expect us to have luggage when arriving at an airport. In Delhi all the taxis have been converted to CNG (compressed natural gas) so the air is cleaner than before but there's not much space in the car boots as the gas tanks take most of it. The car was about the size of a Nissan Micra - four adults plus two medium sized suitcases and no roof rack!

As we drove to the hotel Dal wound us up. Sucking air over his teeth like a plumber shaking his head at a washing machine and saying 'it's a shame it's one of those' he told us the hotel was a bit 'original'. Was this a middle of the night wind-up or had we booked a hovel? Fortunately the former was the case. Arriving just after 3 am we found several staff still hanging around the lobby to welcome us and help us to our room.

The Room
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OK, it's not the Ritz - but we hadn't paid for the Ritz. The room was really very OK and better than a lot I've stayed in more recently in Germany. Most importantly it was spotlessly clean - not something you can take for granted. It was large, had a king sized bed that was lovely and firm with a padded head-board and granite-topped side tables built in. There was plenty of wardrobe space although the wardrobes were all 'lined' with newspapers that dated to April this year. I have never understood why anyone would line a drawer or wardrobe with something as grubby as newsprint. For that matter, why would anyone line them at all unless the surfaces were grubby - which they weren't. To one side of the room there was a glass-topped coffee table with an armchair and two tub-chairs. There was a TV with more channels than you could ever need and beneath was a fridge. To the other side was a small dressing table and chair with a large mirror above.

The décor was in good condition although the paint work had an oddly dated ragging effect and the strange Egyptian style picture over the bed didn't hang straight on either of our visit. The ceiling had the smoothest plaster I have ever seen - but perhaps I notice that because our house has nasty artex. The bedding was a bit iffy - on our first visit the sheet wasn't long enough for the bed and whilst I believe the bedding was probably clean, it was quite old and a bit marked. The room had noisy air-conditioning which we didn't use, preferring instead to go with the ceiling fan.

The bathroom had more hot water than any other we used throughout the holiday. Whatever the time of day we had no problem to get a hot shower. That might sound like a 'so what' factor but it's not - Indian plumbing is usually rather hit and miss. The bathroom had a large sink with a pink granite surround which was very attractive and the walls were tiled floor to ceiling. The toilet was placed to one side and the shower head was beside it - but not so close as to spray the loo and toilet roll as can often happen when the shower isn't in a separate cubicle. The outside wall of the bathroom had a few glass blocks. I really liked the effect but by the time we returned, someone had blocked them with newspaper, perhaps fearing a peeping Tom. I can only say he'd have to be a peeper with eagle-eye vision. My one complaint about the room would be the meanness with towels. Or should I say 'towel' as we had only one fairly small towel between the two of us. Although the towel was changed regularly, they did tend to be quite badly marked which was a bit off-putting.

Our friends were a bit peeved that our room was slightly nicer than theirs - for example we had carpet and they didn't. This was the beginning of a holiday where they kept an eye out for anything we got that they didn't or any special treatment. These became known between the four of us as 'Pinkie Privileges' and I'd have to be honest and say we did get a few. However, I'm still not convinced that it was a race thing - I think it was because my husband always tips and Dal refused to do the same.

What else does the hotel have?
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There's a restaurant in the cellar - we had breakfast there one day which was so slow and so unmemorable that we didn't bother again. Our friends got their order slightly more quickly than we did but when it turned up, it wasn't what they'd ordered at all. The hotel offers room service but I suspect it was brought in from a neighbouring restaurant as any hotel that can't get a cheese sandwich right is unlikely to be able to do multi-country cuisine on its own.

There is a small room with a computer that offers free internet access. I believe there's also free wi-fi in the lobby as one slightly stroppy American lady was having a go at the receptionist about it not working. The computer was in need of a good clean-out and I couldn't get it to work. Not to worry, the manager invited us to go to his other hotel just a few yards down the road, where he let me use his office computer to print our boarding passes.

The hotel can organise tours for you - everything from hiring a driver and car to go sight-seeing in Delhi through to extended tours to Agra, Rajastan and other places. We were quoted a price of 700 rupees (about £8.50) for a driver and air conditioned car for the day. At first this seemed a bit expensive but we soon discovered that rickshaw and taxi drivers had really whacked up their prices since our visit the year before and so we booked a car for the day on both of our visits. For 700 Rp, you get a driver and car for 8 hours and up to 80 km. Rather cheaper than a London black cab.

Other nice things about the hotel
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The receptionist with the red turban - what a super guy. Mind you all of the staff were really nice although the restaurant guys were a bit dozy. The reception area was - despite the used car show room décor - quite a nice place to sit with lots of sofas and newspapers to read. When we left after the first stay we had a late night train. The hotel happily looked after our luggage and when we returned didn't seem to mind how long we hung around, bringing us complimentary drinks whilst we waited for a taxi to arrive.

The reception has a floor of green serpentinite and white marble, something you'd probably only see in a more up-market hotel in Europe. The walls of the reception have bizarre but fun tiling in the style of Gaudi. Someone really had some fun doing the tiling I'm sure.

The Area and Finding the Hotel.
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The hotel is in an area called Rajendra Nagar in the northwest of the city. It's a 3-stop ride (about 10 minutes) on the metro from the centre of New Delhi. The journey will cost you 8 rupees or about 10 pence. It's near enough and convenient enough that we popped in and out of town several times per day. The nearest metro station is called Karol Bagh.

To get to the hotel, leave the KB metro station on the side of the road where the train coming out of town arrives. Go down to the street and turn left for 50 m or so then take the first left - this is the street where the hotel is. Say hello to the security guards who sit beside the road and calm the traffic - we always think it's a good thing to smile and say hello to anyone in a uniform; you never know when you might need them. The walk is just a few blocks through an area of small shops but not the kind where anyone will try to drag you in and sell you something. The road is easily wide enough to walk in and we found that a bit more convenient than the irregular pavements. When you pass the Hotel Megha Sheraton on the right hand side (another hotel owned by the same guy as the Madonna) you are nearly there. The Madonna is on the corner on the right hand side.

How much did we like it?
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It was exactly what we needed and so we went back 2 weeks later and would probably go back again. The hotel for our return to Delhi was the only booking that we hadn't made in advance as we'd decided to 'wait and see' what the Madonna was like. Finding it to be so convenient for the metro, liking the staff and not wanting to waste our Delhi time looking for somewhere else for our return, we decided to book again. The receptionist told me that he had a room for us but the rate would be increasing by another $20 per night because it was a busy time. This led to some jovial negotiation - me saying 'pah, it's too expensive. I'm not paying that', and then pointing out that we were now 'loyal returning customers' and should get a discount. I think he'd worked out that we weren't quite as green as we were cabbage-looking and a compromise was struck. He'd let us have the $83 rate but we'd have to pay one night in advance. I negotiated the inclusion of the airport drop off and the deal was done. NEVER accept a hotel price without a bit of good-natured haggle.

Our Second Visit
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Hubby and I arrived on an overnight train from Amritsar and took the metro to the hotel. There's supposed to be a 15 kg luggage limit for the metro but I think we got away with it for being ignorant foreigners although my poor bear did get a rub-down search from the security guard at the metro station when she did my bag inspection. The hotel staff seemed really surprised when we showed up without a driver but they sat us down and the owner sent a 'boy' out to get us iced bottled water. There was some confusion about our booking as it had been written down in my husband's first name rather than our surname. We told the manager that we knew we were really early but could we just leave our bags and come back later when a room was ready. The hotel we'd left the day before in Amritsar had wanted a full overnight payment just to give us a late checkout (which we turned down) but the owner insisted that since they had the room ready, we could have the room for no extra charge. After a night on the train, the hot shower and a chance to change our clothes was really appreciated.

For our second visit we had the same room. The guys who showed us to our room both remembered that we'd been there before and had the same room so they laughed that they didn't need to show us the room as we knew it already. Considering how many people had been through in the meantime, I was touched that they remembered us.

I really liked the owner/manager and we spent a lot of time talking to him during which time he made absolutely no attempt to sell us anything. If you read other reviews of this hotel elsewhere, visitors have said he's pushy and always trying to sell you a tour or get you a car or arrange something for you. We didn't find that at all - but perhaps some people who are new to the city and don't know where to go might misinterpret an attempt to be helpful as being something more sinister. Alternatively, many people who actually believe the prices in the Lonely Planet (which are generally very outdated) think that they are being ripped off all the time when things aren't as cheap as their guide book tells them they should be.

Recommended?
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For a mid-range hotel that's clean and well-located this gets a thumbs up from me. But book direct, make sure you get your pick-up or drop-off included and check the rate includes taxes. Oh, and say 'hi' from us to the guy in the turban and all the staff. 

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