Hotel Mohan International

My friend and I checked in here for our first few nights in India. If you don't have earplugs then good luck trying to get any sleep. There are constantly about 20 staff wandering aimlessly around outside your room, and all the time talking, shouting and coughing up phlegm. Not too pleasant. The guy who runs the place is also a total crook. Luckily for us we had the brilliant Lonely Planet guidebook. First we inquired about hiring a car and driver to take us around northern India for a week. I say we inquired, but what I really mean is that he tried to force it upon us. Anyway you can just tell who are rats in this world, so we looked in the guidebook, and found a brilliant little company called LTC travel five minutes walk away who managed to get us exactly the same itinerary for half the price. Needless to say, when the owner, whom we came to refer to as "the Oompah Loompah" for good reason, found out he went berserk. Just shows you how much of a winner he thought he was onto with us. He would have taken our fat wad of cash and shoved it straight into his pocket, laughing all the way to the bank. Unfortunately for us he managed to eventually pull one over on us. We asked him to buy us a train ticket down to Bombay, and again it was more him forcing than us wanting, but later that night he presented us with the ticket. He didn't quote us a price, which I think was slightly suspicious looking back on it. Anyway, it had a price on it, a price which we later found to be the total price for both tickets. He charged us that total price each. We even inquired about this, and he lied through his teeth saying, "no, it is each, each". He made about 30 quid profit out of us there and then. A total crook. A couple of other intensely annoying habits are these: Whenever he talked to you he would drag you down to the basement where his office was located. He would never talk to you alone, he always had to have one of his goons present. An intimidation tactic perhaps? Or maybe someone to back up his bent version of the facts. Another time one of the computers I was writing an e-mail on froze. I asked him if I could restart the computer. He came over, by which time the computer had unfrozen, and started to shamelessly read the e-mail I had just written. No class whatsoever. If you can avoid it do not go within an inch of this place. It's extremely depressing at the time, but extremely comical to look back on over a beer. The security guard on the door obviously was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, only letting you enter the premises if you shook his hand. He blatantly got that outfit for Christmas from his mum. I swear that not a single word I have said has been untrue, and that this account is completely accurate. Thanks for taking the time to read this; I hope it prevents other travelers such as myself from being conned in the future. PS. He owns about three other hotels in the same area, so beware. If you see an Oompah Loompah, run!