Indian cringes
1) I was a long way from home. I'd come to see a manufacturer 6 bumpy hrs drive from Mumbai, and had booked into the only hotel for miles around.

It wasn't the smell of damp carpets that made me feel ill at ease - it was the complete absence of any other guests. The hotel was massive, over five hundred rooms, conference centre, etc, a huge, faded, 50s monstrosity.
All that was missing was a squeaky trike.

I've done loads of lonesome travelling in my time - 6 weeks in northern Sweden springs to mind - but this place really got to me.

The many staff were all over me like a rash, fawning, obsequious. I had four people, ostensibly gardeners, watching me swimming. I couldn't take a sip of tea in the morning without the cup being filled by overly attentive waiters.

On the second day I realised what was *really* doing my head in. It was the ubiquitous musak in the empty restaurant, the lobby and the lifts. It was a loop of no more than half an hour, "the Shadows" style stuff on the sitar. It was excruciating and relentless.

By the third evening, I was really starting to crack. I went to the restaurant and drowned my sorrows, bought a beer then a bottle of wine and ate well. The 'piece de resistance' was a rather splendid Irish Coffee, a huge mountain of squirty cream topped with cocoa powder.

For some inexplicable reason, I started to berate the waiters who came to clear my plates. I went on and on for ages about how come they didn't go OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MINDS listening to the looped music, about India's rich musical heritage, how they should take control of the music, put on some banging tunes, or just anything, something different to this inexorable loop. I bent his ear, good and proper, got out my soap boxes and used them to get on my high horse. After about 1/2 an hour of this drunken tirade I was running out of steam.

It was then one of the waiters said "that's all very well sir but did you realise you have a huge chocolate and cream stripe down your nose?"
(Countryslicker, Tue 2 Dec 2008, 15:01, Reply)