Sea Palace Hotel - Near Gateway of India

We arrived late at night to the Moti Hotel Mumbai, We were given the end room on the left with outside bathroom. It was disappointing but after an 8 hr train trip and it was late we agrred to take it. There was a terrible acrid smell in there and the pillows were filthy inside the pillow cases. The tiolet was broken and the bathroom dirty. We got no sleep at all because of the smell and banging noises outside the window - which turned out to be workers peeing, throwing up and washing dished etc right outside all night - hence the dreadful smell. There was no firige in the room The price of a beer, which we were told was cost price was 170 rupees for the weak kingfisher, this was definatelty not cost price. The room was small the bed was too small for us to get our feet in and we had to use the towels to cover ourselves for the dirty blankets. All this cost 3000 rupees per night a lot more than quoted in the lonely planet. What ever you do don't stay in that room, as for the others they didn't look too bad, but we'd had enough and went to Bentleys which was lovely in comparison.

We decided to stay in this hotel after reading a recommendation in the French travel guide "Le routard". After reading some negative reviews I messaged the manager Mr Raj to ascertain if the hotel would be a decent place to stay. It has after all a perfect location just behind the Taj hotel and Gateway to India. The price was 3800 rupees per night including air con. Mr Raj assured us that the hotel was perfectly normal and that he would personally supervise the preparation of our room. Me Raj seems to believe that buttering up his guests will allow him to get away with lying and charging an exorbitant amount for what I can only refer to as a "rat hole". 3800 rupees is around 40 euros..a small fortune in India. Upon arrival we discovered a tiny, shabby, totally run down and filthy room. We made the decision to stay since we had no guarantee to find anything better in the neighbourhood at that price. Everything in the room was old broken or dirty. We had a small fridge, probably never cleaned. Only the ground floor of this building is occupied and clearly Mr Raj has preferred not to spend any of his hotel income on cleaning or repair. The air con did not work properly, so we were either freezing or sweltering. Our bed sheets had holes and stains on them. To prove that I am not exaggerating in the slightest I took lots of photos so you can judge for yourselves.