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ShareTo most travellers, be they tourist or business seeking souls, a hotel is the first impression that a new city imparts to them. Looking beyond the impartial anonymity of the hotel room of course, which more often than not will be faceless and inadequate, there are signs one picks up without even realising it, that will help form the personality of the city in one's mind, and linger till other, stronger impressions delete or change it.
The lobby is one indication. An open door, a welcoming smile, a colourful desk that seems to hold the promise of helpful suggestions on how one's day can be spent... the mind picks up these clues and tucks them away to decide later whether the first memory of the city will be warm and spicy or bland, cold and grey.
Nay, in fact, how often is it that as the taxi draws up, or one drags a suddenly unwilling and instantly heavy suitcase across a threshold, that one is evaluating whether the choice that has been made in absentia, over the net or the telephone, is really the right one, and whether comfort if not friendliness can be expected.
And then, the mind is waiting, like a bird circling for prey, to seize the first impression and hold it close. Nothing can turn one off as much as when, on reaching tired and perhaps cold or hungry to a destination, to walk through the doors of a hotel and be told the rooms are not ready yet. They are still getting cleaned and there would be a wait. If luck is out, then it's past breakfast time too, so the comfort of a warm meal while one waits is also denied. If the option is to take a walk-about while the bed one is dreaming about is being dusted and made, then it is not so bad, provided you can leave your bags behind. Luckily, most hotels offer that option.
There are, seasoned travellers especially those on the budget circuit, who will tell you, hotels and hotels and there is no saying from the name or the city what to expect from one till you are physically inside the doors. I have stayed in lavish places that have every comfort on offer but lack a soul, and found myself smiling as I wake up in a cosy bed tucked away under the slanting staircase of an attic room that is four floors up, and of course there is no lift. The lack of which, of course, was made up by the smiling concierge and the lovely profile of the receptionist whose lashes swept her cheeks as she looked down to search my name in the register.
At such times, I feel that travelling is indeed a journey through life, full of surprises, showing me one aspect of humankind or the other, balancing the good with the bad, the tough with the simple, and etching impressions that make up the sum total of one's experiences of travelling the world.
And when I rifle through the pages and pages of impressions a journey leaves imprinted on memory, the happy thing is that the RAM in my mind has deleted the sour-faced woman who growled at every opportunity as Ifilled the register, myopic with sleep, at close to midnight in a city I felt would be unfriendly, while the smile of the doorman who helped me cross the street laden with two bags to board my coach stays radiant to light the way to the hope of a great trip the next time I pack my bags.
