Roambay — Hotel in Karnataka

Regular Indian neighborhood with Reliance supermarket 2 blocks away. The hostel is rather palacial in it's own way obviously having been converted from a home. Very nice entrance , plants , and space out front to sit in the sun . Nice roomy interiors and AC dorms here. Next door is "Explorest" hostel. Don't even bother with this sub-standard , tight , cramped and throw in the un-friendly management. Roambay hostel has great potential but I'm 2 weeks in with a month total and here's goes some flaws common to many hostels worldwide. The Nepalese couple doing the ground work , cleaning ect don't speak english and in the evening or early morning can't do much except have you wait until Premla the manager arrives around 10 am ish . She's very good and efficient. But already you realize this is no way to run an international quality hostel. You simply must have english speaking staff available 24 hrs a day , otherwise it's painfully obvious you like the money a hostel generates but are cutting corners and paying country folks a pittance to greet guests who, don't speak Nepali. Apparently there are 3 wifi connections available but once you have more than a few guests , bandwidth hasn't been upgraded and you aren't going to connect much. Buy Airtel data and spare yourself the hassle. Kitchen is without decent silverware . No hot water in early morning for AM. departures . Just not acceptable. 4% extra charge if you use credit cards .. Too much. Maybe one day in a future reality they'll wake up and get it together.. It's actually a beautiful place .

PS. As of today January 25 guests are reporting BEDBUGS. Avoid...

Can I add anything more to what has already been not said? This place is "the place" to be for backpackers, solo travelers and romers. Built in a classic old building, the interiors boast of beautiful, clean, comfortable beds, smiling people, curious travellers and immense possibility of conversations from 196 different corners of this pale blue dot.

Talking of cleanliness, I appreciate the discipline and culture that travellers bring here. The bathrooms, kitchen and dining room is cleaner than most of the hostels I have been to in 11 countries around the world. Excellent job. Credit to the team and especially travellers who act responsibly.

A bit of issue with cellular connectivity for Airtel and Jio inside the rooms though. This possibly is due to the thick walls, as the building is quite old. Same goes for WiFi.

There is a mini library in the common room, great for those looking to see inside through pages. There's a kitchen, where you can cook food. There's a fridge, Washing machine and towel available on rent.

The lockers are inside the room near the bed, which makes accessibility a plus. The size of lockers are big enough to accommodate a full 72 litre backpack or 65 cm trolley bag.

The hostel is in the centre of the city which makes exploring places in mysuru easy.

To wrap this up, a beautiful cosy nest with some interesting conversations waiting...

I would not recommend staying there. First reason: they found bed bugs in one of the dorm during my stay . I don’t think that just treating one dorm was enough to get rid of them. Also, it is not very clean. The staff taking care of the cleaning uses the same cloth to wipe the floor and the kitchen counter . We where each of us on turns washing it since it was smelly and very dirty . Once we bought one and it disappeared. It is not a fully furnish kitchen, there was no ustensiles and we ended up buying them . There is only one electric stove for one pot . Some girls had arrange a ride for a day , then got pressured to pay more … a scam or something , so they left the hostel that night . Someone had booked a private room… when she arrived she was told she would be sharing . One of the dorms doesn’t have AC… very hot even in winter .The cleaners keeps on cleaning the leafs out side , they make the clothes fall from the dryer … they live it there .I met very nice people there but the hostel is not clean and when we try to ask management , nothing is done to help . They don’t seem to care . Would need proper trained staff for cleaning . There is also a lot of local travellers in and out everyday booking especially for work reasons . Fridge is to small, shelf’s are dirty and to small, your things disappears...