India's Clarks Shiraz hotel

On our month-long trip to INDIA in November-December ’04, we found the Clarks Shiraz (54, Taj Road, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, INDIA; phone +91 05622 222 6121 or visit www.hotelclarksshiraz.com) to be a fine and efficient hotel, far better equipped to accommodate travelers than several of the other hotels we stayed in. But somehow it gave us one of the least-satisfying experiences.

From the moment we entered the hotel, we felt we had arrived at a tourist factory. In other hotels in India, we were treated as living, breathing people whose requests deserved polite attention, at the very least. At the Clarks Shiraz we felt as if we were inert units that had to be processed.

This is not to say that courtesy was lacking, but we did feel that the staff were inconvenienced by our requests, as if they had heard it all too often before. It was a surprise to be treated this way in India. Indeed, the only place we can remember having exactly the same sensation was in the large hotels of China.

In fact, a great deal of the Clarks Shiraz establishment reminded us of China. The reception desk was a little too expansive, the lobby was just a little too large and inchoate, the pastry-and-coffee shop was just a little too undefined and the ground floor dining room was a little too endless.

Similarly, our room had a “China hotel” feel about it. Room No. 163 was of reasonable size, not too large but not cramped. The furniture was well worn. The bathroom was the standard 3-star tiled model. (In 2006, room-only rates start at Rs4,000 [near $86] single and Rs4,500 [$96] double.)

On our way into the hotel we saw a wedding being set up in the garden between the main hotel block and the swimming pool. Later that week, after nights and nights of sleep disrupted by weddings, we were most insistent that we be given a quiet room. The manager was equally insistent that he had given us one.

It is true that our room was in the block most removed from the wedding site. On the other hand, it directly overlooked the garden, and the wedding there was noisy enough to disrupt our evening, and there was an even noisier wedding in the restaurant just beyond the hotel grounds and yet another in the restaurant beyond that!

And the hotel itself was noisy. The walls were just a little too thin to stop loud conversations and TV noise from the next room — again reminiscent of China.

Also as in China, the hotel seemed to us to be overheated. We made repeated requests for relief at the front desk, and we were assured that something was being done, but nothing ever was. We gained a bit of relief on our first morning by opening the trick latch shutting the casement windows for the winter. However, by the time we returned from our day’s touring the windows had been resealed, and we were too concerned about evening mosquitoes to reopen them.

The breakfast buffet was extensive and provided more options for Indian food than we had met anywhere else on the trip. The food was good but nothing beyond ordinary hotel food, and nothing inspired us to take dinner at the hotel. While the Clarks Shiraz is not near anything, we were able to walk to Only Restaurant one night and got a good meal.

On balance, we found the Clarks Shiraz survivable. Somehow, though, it didn’t seem very much like India — and we wondered whether the greater density of activity on Fathebad Road might have made our other options, Mansingh Palace or Howard Park Plaza, better for our particular needs. It appeared there was no suitable hotel in Agra near any of the principal tourist sites.

CLYDE F. HOLT
Hinesburg, VT