The Hotel Benzy Palace

Entrance to the Benzy Palace

After staying 3 nights in the Hotel Host Inn, without internet and a crappy breakfast, broken phone system we decided to move.  Our new bud Elroy booked us into this hotel just around the corner with internet a great restaurant and a working phone system, it even has a Hook-ah pipe lounge and bar on the roof, bonus.  We tried a chicken curry, with garlic cheese Naan bread and water the first night, excellent and the second night we had Mushroom Masala with baked cheese potatoes and a sauce with Naan bread, yum. Oh and a couple of beers too, dinner is really cheap here about $7 for both of us.  A beer is 60rupis ea for a large beer which computes to around $1.30.

The Grand Exterior of the Benzy

This is a beautiful exterior to this hotel, what I could do with this, however they have added a fake tree trunk thing for the restaurant onto the front which really makes it tacky.  In its day it must have been beautiful though, lots of crown moulding etc inside.

Elroy

Elroy is a friend of "Roy" who is our online travel agent from Canada and he suggested we contact Elroy while in Mumbai, so glad we did, he has been so helpful.  He also is a biker, he rides a 1974 Royal Enfield 350 Bullet, and yes you do see a BMW sticker on his tank however this is a tank he found and it just happened to fit perfectly!! Im sure he gets alot of questions on that.

Nice to have contacts

With having the bike on this trip with us it means that we get to meet local bikers and they are always keen to lend a hand, it is so nice, bikers stick together..   He has been in the travel industry for many years and has travelled himself all over the world so fascinating to chat with, he gave us lots of pointers for India too.  He let us know that "drinking" and driving in Mumbai is
Handled very seriously, like no tollerance and if you get caught you will spend the night in the slammer and if its friday you aint getting out till Monday, so thats not happening, not that we drink and drive anyway..He said Goa on the other hand is a completely different matter..lots of ex pats there.