Ganga Fuji Home/Ganga Yogi Lodge

Captain Maybe

I arrived in Varanasi yesterday and got a prepaid autorickshaw to take me to the Ganga Fuji Home, where I was expecting to stay. Except the rickshaw took me to the Ganga Yogi Lodge instead.

Obviously I didn't notice at the time, but now I've realised I'm in a bit of a quandary. The place seems very nice - the room is decent, there's hot water, although there was no one else at dinner or breakfast. The fact that one way or another I've been hoodwinked makes me very wary. Does anyone know of this place? Should I check out immediately?

To be honest the next thing I'm going to do is look for the Fuji Home and see if they still have a room, so I'm kind of answering my own question, but let me know what you think.

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Captain Maybe

capt_mahajan

It may have been a genuine mistake. Very similar sounding names, perhaps a foreign accent?
Impossible to be sure, though.

Have you indeed been hoodwinked? Assuming the rickshaw guy was a tout, he got a commission. But, unless you are overpaying for the room, you aren't spending extra yet. Unless the place is unsafe or they are going to rob you or whatever.

If you feel it is a genuine hotel with no hanky panky, you can go around to Ganga Fuji and compare and decide.

If you feel there is something fishy which may impact safety, get your gear and check out asap.

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Outside the machine

atala

The Ganga Fuji Home is namewise alluding to the Ganga Fuji restaurant which is at a different location. Yet the Ganga Fuji Home has its own restaurant as well. The hotel is cramped into a tall building: going to the restaurant one has to climb a lot of stairs to the roof-top. Going up there I had the opportunity to look into a number of very small rooms (doors were open when I went to the restaurant.) Rooms are designed, as you might guess from the name of the Hotel, for Japanese tourists which seem to stay there a lot. Obviously they would be used to cramped situations. The rooms looked nice, good quality, but really quite small. If you are happy with your present hotel, it may actually be the better option.

Also, I thought the Ganga Fuji Home rooms may not be that quiet, because restaurant guests have to pass by them a lot. The Fuji Home has a nice roof-top to take a 360 degree video of Varanasi. Spectacular for sunsets. Food is good (service a bit slow when I visited 10 months ago), with music, but I would not want to stay there.

As to Ganga Yogi Lodge. I assume you are aware that the choice of name is alluding to the famous Yogi Lodge near the Vishvanath temple. Similar names are frequent in Varanasi because of the fame of some places. So your Autorickshaw cannot be blamed, I think.

Captain Maybe

Thanks for the replies.

I seem to remember that the rickshaw driver (in fact, the assistant rickshaw driver) showed me a Ganga Fuji Home business card. Of course, in looking at it I may only have been seeing what I expected to see.

Anyway, I went to the GFH, and wasn't too impressed. The nice rooms are too expensive (990 rs) and the cheap rooms weren't good enough.

So I'm planning to go to the Hotel Ajaya. I've seen the rooms - pretty good value, I think, although the hotel isn't as characterful as the ones nearer the river. But boring is perfectly fine with me.

machadinha

I agree, getting names mixed up there because of the popularity is quite common. Must be impossible on drivers. I.e., You get the Yogi X and Yogi Z Lodge and the Shanti A or B place. Took me about half a day to locate the latter, what with all those winding alleys that no rickshaw can access to boot.

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catherinemacarthur

this is 100% a scam on the part of the ganga yogi lodge that is still very much going on. we arrived in varanasi this morning, took a rickshaw, whose driver turned out to be a tout. took us to the ganga yogi lodge and lied repeatedly to us when we asked if it was the ganga fugi home. should have trusted our gut, but went along with it for a bit before calling them out on their lie and demanding our money back.

Darmabum

Ahhhhhhh . . . Varanasi, that's why I love it so . . . the "business" starts immediately

In almost three years in India, I've seldom met a rickshaw driver that wasn't affiliated with some guest(s) house(s). Just another way for them to supplement their wages. Maybe you'll discover this today, being your second day, that every guest house owner has a cousin who owns a silk shop . . . "just looking . . . OK"

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