Travel
1 min read
A bamboo hut and a three-star business hotel
The widest gap in the group sits between two houses about half an hour apart — and neither is a compromise on the other.
At Highway Huts the walls are bamboo. So are the ceilings and the wardrobe doors. The floors are timber, the bed is a proper one, and each cabin opens onto its own strip of ground instead of a corridor. The kitchen works farm-to-table from the gardens on site. There is no nightlife and nobody pretends otherwise: people come for a walk, a slow dinner, and a night without a screen on.
Half an hour away, Hotel Dream Majestic is a three-star in Mohali built for business and leisure in the same week. Air conditioning, high-speed WiFi, a flat-screen, room service around the clock. Rooms furnished plainly and well — which, at this size, is the entire job.
Neither is a lesser version of the other. A bamboo cabin without a television is not a business hotel that fell short, and a well-run three-star is not a retreat that lost its nerve. They answer different weeks.
It is worth saying plainly, because groups usually smooth this out. A house style gets applied everywhere until the properties stop being distinguishable and the guest is choosing by postcode. Here the distance between the quietest house and the most practical one is the point, not a problem waiting to be solved.
