Best hotel stays: What factors make a hotel experience so amazing?

By Brian Johnston
July 30 2016 - 12:15am
It isn't always the best or most luxurious hotels that provide the best stays Photo: iStock
It isn't always the best or most luxurious hotels that provide the best stays Photo: iStock
Old comforts: Steak and kidney pie with mashed potatoes and grilled tomatoes at the colonial-era Windamere Hotel in Darjeeling, India. Photo: Leisa Tyler
Old comforts: Steak and kidney pie with mashed potatoes and grilled tomatoes at the colonial-era Windamere Hotel in Darjeeling, India. Photo: Leisa Tyler

Darjeeling in the foothill of the Himalayas, October 2003. Candles flicker in the gloom of the Windamere Hotel's dining room. Potted ferns and chintz curtains droop against apricot walls. White-gloved waiters carry trays like the footmen in Downton Abbey, from which guests serve themselves with dishes out of 1930s Britain: watercress soup, chicken in sherry sauce, trifle that wobbles like the chins of a dowager duchess. An elderly Indian gentleman ("Call me BP") sips on his gin-martini and pokes at a steamed vegetable pie.

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