Stay Banaras - A Boutique Hotel

The hotel was cozy, clean and comfortable. The rooms were clean and well appointed and the staff was friendly and helpful. The breakfast was quite good as well and Nitu makes an excellent cup of coffee. The bathrooms are India-style, with the showers unseparated from the rest of the bathrooms

Banaras is woefully short of clean, comfortable, reasonably priced hotels, specially if you want to be near the ghats. This hotel is not near the ghats and so it does not matter where it is located, in this dusty, filthy, crowded city of uncouth people. Since I needed to be at a specific place near the BHU, this was a good enough oasis to escape to, except that it is super noisy with annoying music blaring away all day long late into the night that can be heard right on the second floor suite. This is their idea of creating a certain vibe that attracts hordes of local teenagers who flock here just for a photo shoot in the photogenic courtyard / restaurant. They generally make a nuisance of themselves by throwing trash around and behaving like spoilt brats. The only room worth staying is the suite on the 2nd floor with the tub with ample natural light. All others are very compact. However in typical Indian manner, the bathroom does not have a separate wet area and the entire bathroom is splashed after the shower. The restaurant is over hyped with emphasis on non Indian dishes. Stay Banaras does not have a single traditional Banaras dish. The few Indian dishes lean towards paneer and are cooked to please the “mild” foreign palate. Pav Bhaji and pasta are offered for breakfast making me wonder who in their right mind will eat these at 8 in the morning! The beverage menu is more interesting than the food menu. The car sent to the airport for pickup was decent and acceptable but the car that came for the drop was a junk dump. I had to call Uber.

Hotel is safe, cozy and artistic. service is good and their food from their restaurant is great. The best part is the blue tokai coffee!!!