Dune Barr House - Verandah in the Forest

Amazing Location (close to all the famous points) Very Rustic and old school architecture - Amazing weekend getaway from Mumbai where you can tune out from everything. Great Homely Food, Great Menu. Manager Ratheesh is very polite and knowledgeable

That sounds like a dream getaway! Heritage properties nestled in forests often offer a unique blend of history and natural beauty. It must be quite an experience to enjoy great food, hospitality, and service in such a serene environment. Mr Ratheesh is taking all care during stay.

It’s a pretty colonial property where one feels that one is living in a bygone era. The super deluxe rooms on the verandah are really spacious. The chirping of the birds, the thumping of langoors and monkeys on the ceiling and the ringing of the large bell of the nearby temple adds to the orchestra of rustling leaves. Hospitality is exemplary. Ratheesh looks into minute details to make one’s stay comfortable. His enthusiastic wife and son add to the charm of this place, makes it a boutique homestay. We loved the meals here. Breakfast, lunch on the verandah with the feeling of being outdoors and the candlelight dinners on fine crockery heightens the experience.

Beautiful 170 year old historic Victorian style British mansion in the beautiful hill station of Matheran. Quiet, peaceful. The staff is very helpful and they have the best manager I have ever met. He goes out of his way for every visitor. He wants to make sure all the guests are having the best vacation experience. Their breakfast and dinners are excellent. Dessert is excellent. We loved our room. High ceilings. Comfortable beds. Very clean. This was such a nice, relaxing vacation. When I come back, I will definitely stay at this place again.

Myself and my wife arrived at Dune Barr me on horseback she by rickshaw. We had travelled from Mumbai and the peace and serenity were the things that first hit us. It is an amazing place to stay and so tranquil. The host and his staff are very welcoming and friendly it is a beautiful place

We had a wonderful time in this place. Matheran its like a farytaile, and it is easy to forget the busy life in the modern world. The staff in Dune Barr is wonderful and the service and food as well. The manager in the hotel was very helpful, and we felt that we was very well taking care of. Highly recommended.

We had an excellent experience at the Dune Barr House. The grounds are beautiful and refreshingly removed from typical day to day chaos. We truly felt we were in a different world during our stay. Although the hotel is a lovely step back and time, it is still full of excellent service and staffing that made our stay very comfortable. Rateesh is exceptionally kind and truly invested in his guests comfort, enjoyment, and safety. He gives very helpful tips and recommendations that a visitor can trust and feel safe following. He helps arrange all your needs from food, transportation, porters, etc. All the staff at the hotel are pleasant and very eager to help in any way they can. Food is prepared specially per your order, and is delicious! Would definitely recommend this hotel for a very authentic and immersive but also comfortable and safe stay in Matheran.

A precious little gem at the far end of Matheran Table Mountain, lonely, remote and surrounded by the jungle forest of the former British hill station. Anyone coming here with expectations of US-style boutique luxury hotels or ayurvedic gimmicks for stressed-out city dwellers will find themselves in the wrong place. By contrast, those who have retained their sense of the enchanted, mysterious and historic will come here and won't want to leave. The Barr House is a classic English hill villa, as dozens of them may have stood here in the years 1860 et seq., a cross-over between the classic Anglo-Indian bungalow and the chalets the English had seen in the Swiss and German Alps. When you walk across the huge veranda, through the two-storey high salon of the porch, take your candlelit dinner at the huge banqueting table in the dinner hall, or go to sleep in one of the huge, cool dark rooms, you are deeply into a lost world. The special charm of this house lies in the fact that it has largely been left in peace: although much of it could more or less urgently do with renovation or repair, this would easily spoil the feeling of being in a distant past. Barr House is neither neglected nor run-down, it lives in its own time. Another guest who was last here ten years ago, assured us that not all that much had changed since then. The house has aged gracefully and yet is as modern as it needs to be: everything you want is there, and it is top quality, whether it be a wonderfully powerful, hot shower, a bed with a perfect mattress or the scrupulous cleanliness of the rooms; only what you don't need is missing. Instead, there's a litre of atmosphere in every corner of the property, and for communication junkies who can't stop posting their current state of mind to an astonished world even from up here, there even is a back of house area where amazingly fast and stable Wi-Fi can be used. The meals served to guests are simply superb: a fresh and varied hot and cold breakfast to rival any luxury accommodation in Mumbai, and superlative dinners from an improbable menu, you wonder how the house can keep all the fresh and stunningly delicious dishes on hand and where they are actually prepared. I particularly recommend a local chicken dish called Bhurjwadi Kombdi, for me one of the best Indian preparations ever tasted, full of spice and flavour through and through. The Barr House does not have a liquor licence, so if you need beer or wine with your meal, it will be best to bring your own. Service - including shooing away the omnipresent monkeys with a slingshot - is essentially provided by a couple of "boys" who, in their discreet and sometimes quietly shy manner, come across just as well as trained staff fresh out of hotel management school. The memory of our stay at Barr House will be a long-lasting one. This was, in my personal opinion, the absolute highlight of the entire stay in Matheran. Very highly recommended. ---------------------------------------------