In August 2019 we did a road trip from mumbai to delhi. We stopped over at nights in Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Udaipur & jaipur. This is part of of a series of 5 posts about food & travel experienced during the trip.

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Read about part 1 of 10 here: cafe farohar

This post is about our stay at house of MG, Ahmedabad during the trip. We enjoyed our lunch at sante spa & dinner at agashiye (have written about both of them before). There is also a small section on taj Surat.

In a NUtshell

A memorable stay in a beautifully restored 100 year old building that was built by two businessmen brothers a century back. Perfect blend of Modern amenities & history. Unmissable.

Address & other details: house of MG

Disclaimer: All restaurants / eateries / hotels reviewed by YUMMRAJ were visited by YUMMRAJ himself & he has paid for the full Bill & tips also. http://www.yummraj.com does not have even one featured / sponsored reviews. YUMMRAJ believes in going to a restaurant in anonymity, as a normal guest, experience everything & give a honest account of the same to you.

Have paid for my stay here. Can’t publish the bill as that has my real name & details:)

I rate all the food items & then give a final overall rating which is a simple average of the individual item ratings. What the ratings stand for: 5 = Excellent, 4 = Very Good, 3 = Good, 2 = Fair, 1 = Disaster

Short description- in case u r in a hurry

During our trip to Ahmedabad few years back, we had been to the house of MG – to have dinner. We had decided that time only, to come & stay here some day.

Being honest – when we planned the road trip from mumbai to Delhi & finalized the stopover cities, we had not planned house of MG. We had actually called taj worldwide booking to get us booked in all the cities. We were surprised to hear that taj does not have a property in Ahmedabad. They booked us for Surat, Udaipur, jaipur.

That’s when we remembered house of MG & booked it immediately. So happy we did. This is so much better than any taj vivanta or gateway experience. The taj Surat property that we stayed in, was in a state of mess , due to a major renovation in progress. The people at taj were however excellent, as always.

The drive:

The Surat to Ahmedabad Road was outstanding. There were posters & constant reinforcement about ‘trucks, please drive in your lane’. There were checks at few places. This ensured a very clear drive from the driving lane, on excellent roads.

However there was something that is still a mystery to me. In multiple places there were herds of cows in the highway that had cattle barriers on the side, for miles. In one occasion, a cow came out from the divider bushes right in front of our car. I saw it in the right time & that helped us avoid a very bad accident.

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Story of house of MG:

The building was built as a house to stay, by two brothers who were successful businessmen of Ahmedabad in early 1900s. They stayed in the building for a few decades & closer to partition of 1947, the family shifted to a newer part of Ahmedabad.

The building remained unused for many decades till the descendants of the family renovated it in the 1990s & got it back to its full form.

The hotel as we saw it –

This was a private haveli & people used to stay here. When this was converted to a hotel, the rooms were obviously not uniform , like in a planned hotel. Neither are the rooms situated on both sides of the alley. Rooms are all over the building.

The staircases are steep. The older railings are beautiful. The ceilings are high. The balconies are magical.

The overall décor of the hotel is beautiful. A lot seems to have been added to the original, but everything has fallen in place together. The old elements seemed to have been patiently & ably renovated.

There were beautiful artefacts, vintage furniture, all over.

WE spent a lovely time in the semi open area being the reception – with high ceiling. It had jhoolas & the area was stunningly beautiful.

The pool area was beautiful.

We spent a lot of time in the two stores in the hotel. One was a craft shop selling top notch artefacts from across the country. The other store cum exhibition was unique – they had vintage original pieces owned by the family – Few only for display & the rest on sale. Just to give a perspective – we checked the price of a stunningly beautiful 100 year old cushion cover. It was for Rs. 60000.

The famous Gujarati cuisine restaurant agashiye was situated On The terrace – we had our dinner there. Loved it absolutely. Please read YUMMRAJ’s earlier review on Agashiye here – Agashiye. 

The restaurant at ground floor also serves very good vegetarian food from across India. We are a quick breakfast here.

The hotel has an elaborate list of activities (including heritage walks, cycle tours, visit to handicrafts factories etc etc), but most of these activities were in the mornings. We could not enjoy those as we wanted to drive out by 8 am next day, to reach Udaipur by afternoon.

The hospitality staff at the hotel were not that hospitable (suboptimal warmth, a tinge of arrogance, occasional plastic smiles, bordering cold). They were not bad too – they did their job well, though the facial expression seemed they were doing a favor. No comparison to the warmth & effectiveness of staff at most taj hotels.

Where we stayed – Suite with kitchenette:

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As we reached our suite, we realised that the Door had an old lock probably from the time the family used to live here. The door had two leaves (pallas) made from heavy wood. Over a century, the wood would have weathered & changed shape a bit – hence closing the door was tricky every time. Over our stay we had perfected the art of opening & closing the door😊

Inside the suite was a sitting area in the front part & a bed room in the rear part. The passage to the kitchen & the washroom was thru the bedroom.

A cut out of a lady from the family, in one corner of the room, looked very real & at times could be spooky & freak one out, in the night.

An old switchboard with DC switches in it, near the entrance, was a very interesting element of the room.

The sofas were modern day & plain in color. However, this was offset by the colourful hand embroidered cushion covers & durries from Kutch , Gujarat.

The four poster wooden bed, I guess a century old, was the key attraction. It had a mosquito net attached to it – however much I hate mosquito nets in general – I kind of liked this one for some odd reason😊

Loved the bookshelf – stunning.

The kitchenette was a fully functional one, with an induction cooker, a refrigerator, a beautiful heavy, ceramic kettle & cutlery.

As expected, there was no bathtub in the washroom – as this was a traditional Gujarati house, a 100 years back.

Loved every bit of the stay here. Highly recommended by YUMMRAJ.