I and my family (wife and kid) had stayed at Hotel Garuda in Darjeeling for 3 nights from 13-May-09 thru 15-May-09 when on a tour. Our first impression was rather shocking- the hotel’s entrance is along a dirty public lane. Inside however, the hotel is quite clean and well carpeted.
There are many floors but I could not find any lift around. We ourselves however did not find this a problem, as our room was on the same floor as the reception’s. The staff were quite courteous and responded quickly to frequent needs like drinking water or towels. I felt the washroom could be better equipped for the fairly large space it had. For instance there was no platform to keep toiletries on (shaving kit, toothpaste, etc), and we had to use the sink itself for this.
The hotel’s restaurant is awfully small, just enough to hold a couple of families at a time. So we had to order our items well in advance by calling up the reception from our room, and we would be informed when we could come down to the restaurant. We were on a CPAI plan, so breakfast was complimentary for two. The breakfast service seemed somewhat frugal in that they were offering us melted butter (ghee) to go with the bread, until we refused to accept it. Food quality was quite good though- at least we had no health problems with it! The hot water was available only during selected hours in the morning and evening, and not for 24 hrs! All said and done, I feel a family could nevertheless survive their stay at Hotel Garuda, though a lot needs to be done by the management.