Invité
11 février 2024
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. ---------------------------------------------
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