The hotel where we stayed in Gangtok (Sikkim, India) had a spacious, clean, comfortable bedrooms. However, it was staffed and managed (rather, mismanaged) by amazingly incompetent people. To avoid embarrassing them, I will not name the hotel, which was, surprisingly, highly rated on a well known travel website.

On our first night, we ordered dinner to be served at 830 pm. The manager said that would be alright and that he would call us in our room when the food was served. At 840, we had not heard anything. So, I rang reception and was told that the food would be ready soon. It was after 9 pm that we were served an unappealing meal.

Some days later, we met the owner. He told me that we complained because as we were “Britishers” and we believed that “the sun never sets over the British Empire”, we expected dinner to be served on time. I pointed out that my wife, although British by naturalisation, is an Indian and I am only first generation British because my parents were born outside the former British Empire. So, our complaint about the meal had nothing to do with nostalgic ideas about imperialism, but much more to do with the poor management of the hotel. I have described this in detail not because it was the only or worst example of the establishment’s failings. It was just one of very many.

Because our hotel’s carering was so unsatisfactory, we dined in another hotel nearby. On our last evening, the dining room of this hotel filled with young Sikkimese men, all with carefully styled hair. We discovered that the hotel was hosting the finalists for the “Mr Sikkim 2019” competition that was soon to be judged. All of the finalists looked pleasant enough, but none of them appeared to be particularly outstanding. I thought that the judges would have a tough time choosing the winner.

After dinner, we walked back to our hotel to settle the bill for our accommodation. We had been assured several times that payment by card would be acceptable, but when we arrived with our card, the manager (hotel owner, possibly) told us that because of poor internet signal, card payment would not, after all, be possible. In that case, we replied, we would not be able to pay. Expecting to pay by card, we had not drawn out nearly enough cash. The manager called one of his assistants, a room boy, who appeared to be savvy with mobile phones. He managed to get the card machine to work, but charged our card one percent of what we owed. Being honest people, we pointed out his error. The young man who was not challenged by IT, was weak in arithmetic skills. Much palaver ensued whilst we waited for him to set up the payment system once more. Throughout all of this, the manager, rather than assisting his numerically challenged employee, stood by, watching helplessly. Meanwhile, I had to stifle my laughter. This cumbrous settling of our bill was yet another example of what John Cleese would have considered fine material for episodes in the comedy series “Fawlty Towers”.