The Lalit Hotel in Bekal is about 2 hours from Mangalore airport in Northern Kerala. There are only a couple of hotels in this area, as it’s largely uncommercialised and not yet fully on the tourist trail.
We had the hotel car pick us up from the airport as we didn’t fancy a 2 hour drive in the back of a cab. The driving in India is a pretty crazy white-knuckle ride, but at least with the hotel drivers you have more of a chance of them understanding your frantic instructions to ‘slow down’ and ‘whoa…don’t overtake on a blind hill/bend/bridge PLEASE!’
First impressions were good, we were greated with a Bindi, and a glass of kiwi juice and cold towels. We were then taken to our room in a golf buggy. We’d booked the Spa Room, which was lovely – large and well designed, with a gorgeous private patio and an outdoor jacuzzi. We never used the jacuzzi, but it looked nice!
In Kerala, non 5-star hotels are not allowed to serve ‘liquor’ (basically, any spirits). The sale of spirits is not permitted in any part of the state other than certain hotels, so we had a pretty alcohol-free week, with just the odd beer. We found out later that the cost of the alcohol licence is huge and most places can’t afford to buy them, as they struggle to make their money back. Wine is incredibly expensive in India, even the local brand, Sula, so we didn’t bother with it. Being almost booze-free on holiday was a bit odd to start with, but was quite an enjoyable change as we got into it.
The extensive grounds backed on to the backwaters, a beautiful river, which was in our ‘back garden’ outside our room. The river was surrounded by palm trees – truly mindblowingly beautiful. They seemed to be constantly maintaining the property and it’s incredibly clean and tidy.
The hotel only had one restaurant, and we were worried that might be a bit limiting, but the range of food on the menu was really varied, and there was a full buffet pretty much every day. The food was excellent, lots of South and North Indian dishes and a good range of western food for the days when we fancied something bland. On New Years Eve they really pushed the boat out, with an amazing buffet and entertainment.
The Lalit has to be the quietest hotel I’ve ever stayed at – we were quite often the only people round the pool. At times it was like having our own resort, and when other people were around they were all Indian families – we were the only westerners in the hotel, which was lovely. There is a great spa in its own building, I thoroughly recommend the Auyervedic full body massage and there is kayaking on the river, which we didn’t try.
This is definitely not an average holiday spot, and I would only recommend it if you are happy doing absolutely nothing. There’s not much to do in the surrounding area either, so make sure you have plenty of books to keep you amused. But if you want somewhere to rest, relax and recouperate it’s perfect. The rooms are spacious an the beds comfy. Oh, and beware – there’s only 1-hour a day of free wifi access, which makes you really think about what you want to look at online!
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The church itself wasn’t open so we couldn’t have a look round, but the surrounding area looked beautiful in the evening sun, and was really relaxing.
