One of the very first things you do when you plan a trip to a foreign country is sort out the flight dates and book your accommodation. My trip to Nepal was no different and after I knew the exact dates I’d be staying in Nepal, I started searching for a reasonably priced hotel, somewhere close to the center and near the main tourist areas.
As I knew no one who had been to Nepal, I turned to the recommendations Lonely Planet made in their Nepal guide, a great source of information put together by Joe Bindloss, Trent Holden and Bradley Mayhew. In the budget section of their “Sleeping” listings I found Hotel Horizon, “A good choice down an alley off the main street in southern Thamel, making it a quiet and central option.”
While room rates were decent, ranging from $15 to $30 per night for single standard room to double deluxe room, you can get them even cheaper in the off season (from $12 to $25) between July and August. Doing the bookings online was no hustle at all, and the free airport pick at up was an added bonus. Their website looks professional and easy to navigate, but are things as good as they claim? Here are the pros and cons of staying at Hotel Horizon:
5 good things about the hotel:
- The location of the hotel is indeed great, just a few minutes’ walk from Thamel Street.
- As mentioned in most travel guides, the hotel staff is friendly, though a bit too laid back for the kind of business they’re running.
- When I was there, there was no free wifi connection (as their website claims) but a few ancient desktops connected to the Internet can do the job of sending proof of life to your beloved back home. Also, Kathmandu Post, a major English-language newspaper published in Nepal, is available for free in the lobby.
- The small garden and the few tables and chairs placed outside create a great atmosphere where you can relax and enjoy a book or the complimentary newspaper. The traditional Nepali balcony (pidi) is equally relaxing.
- The rooms are clean, with cable TV and there’s hot water in the shower.
5 things you should be aware of:
- They do pick you up at Tribhuvan International Airport free of charge, but it is not the hotel staff who waits for you inside the airport with your name written on a piece of paper (as you would expect), but a porter who insists on carrying all your backpacks to the parking lot. Here, after you finally meet the guy from the hotel, you are encouraged to give the porter a tip for his trouble. I mean, wasn’t the hotel staff supposed to meet and greet you right off the plane? As you most likely haven’t stopped at the currency exchange booth inside the airport to change your dollars into rupees, you end up giving the porter an outrageously high tip (which most probably will be shared with the hotel staff). So, you would have probably ended up paying less by just taking a taxi to the hotel.
- The hotel’s kitchen is poorly stocked, and all that “wining and dining” fanfare on their website is just PR. The first thing I wanted to buy after I checked in was a bottle of cold water. To my surprise, they had no bottled water left and I was advised to walk to the nearby supermarket and buy some from there. I mean, how difficult can it be to stock up your fridge with water?
- As the Rough Guide points our, Hotel Horizon is “very secluded down a quiet side lane…” While this is great after a day’s sightseeing, the lane that leads to the hotel (which forms a dead end) is completely dark at night. This might potentially be quite dangerous for lone travelers, especially women. (At the time when I was there, a local English-language newspaper reported the gruesome kidnapping and rape of a Western woman!)
- Unfortunately, the view outside the windows of many of the rooms is quite depressing, consisting of rundown buildings and rubble. Also, construction workers were hard at work on a new building right next to the hotel and the noise they generated was commensurate with their enthusiasm…
- The fact that they provide free airport pickup doesn’t not mean that they’re going to take you back to the airport free of charge. On the contrary, the fee they ask for airport drop off is outrageously high and practically it balances out the free ride you received at first. Just say no and catch a cab!
Horizon Hotel has been around for twenty years and the sixteen rooms they offer to budget travelers are a real bargain when you take into consideration all the pros and cons detailed above. Although you can’t believe everything they have on their website, part of which is just copy-and-paste from other travel websites about Nepal, their offer is secure and hustle free.
