Periyar Villa Home Stay - Thekkady

Location is quite near to city centre. Room size was very good. breakfast they provided was way beyond expectations from a home stay. It's grand bungalow property, nicely done interiors and furniture, doesn't feel like you are staying with a Muslim family, well educated family. They provided a servant quarter for our driver to sleep. but no meals for him. Other hotels we stayed, everywhere our driver got a meal in staff kitchen. The lady ' Rehna' was courteous to get our luggage in but since suitcases were heavy, I transferred out luggage myself. We didn't book the boating at Periyar national park online, Host Mr. Thajudeen said it's the Diwali season so we will not get the tickets. since he works with local tourism, he said he would manage to get it but it would cost us 625 Rs instead of 255Rs. per head. But for my dad it was unreasonable so we didn't book it through him. We anyways got the tickets at the ticket counter for 255Rs.

The host's complete family ( they have a joint family) is staying at ground floor, and first floor has 4 big rooms which they have turned in to home stay - but the stairway to first floor is from the main house, so it feels awkward entering the stay. we had taken 2 rooms, but the queen bed was not enough for a 10 year old kid. at around 11:30 in the night, we needed couple of bedsheets and an extra bed, When we checked there was a single mattress outside of our room and there was a cupboard which had towels and bedsheets, so we served ourselves like we do in other homestay, rather than waking up the family ( as they sleep early in mountains). Morning when we were heading for a tour the house Lady ( 'Rehna' was her name) said that she was so not happy that we took the extra mattress and bedsheets without her permission. She said she was disappointed that we took it ourselves. I had to explain her that we did that thinking as a goodwill and not waking up family in the middle of the night - as there are no intercoms - no room service number to call. I further explained her that it's not her personal stuff that we had touched, and I will pay if she wants to charge for the extra mattress. She billed us 1800Rs for 2nights for the extra mattress in the final bill. which I think was way too unreasonable. First of all the price of the homestay is not less than any 3 star hotel, I paid 18.5K for 2 rooms / 2 night. comes to 4.5K/room/night. and then you charge for an extra mattress and that also you disrespect the guests that you didn't like their action. I mean common - is that what is called a homestay then chuck it,,I have had stayed in home stays before but not like this one. No more home stays in life! Lesson learnt. Other improvements required. - hot water cattle I got in my room had some weird bugs inside it - I had to replace it. - beware of fire ants in the balcony. - Toilet commode seat hight is very high.