Reaching Manoribel Beach Resort

Best way to reach Manori Beach is to take a 10 minutes ferry ride from Marve Beach.

A gate and a sign board welcomes you to this resort. As you walk in you forget this part belongs to Mumbai.

Rooms and Cottages

There is ample space between each cottage giving some great privacy.

All cottages have veranda in the front with cane chairs and table to sit and relax. If you can convince the hotel staff, get your food delivered and enjoy it here.

The inside has a traditional look and feel. Takes you back in the 1980’s style but with modern facilities aka Air-conditioner and geysers.

Garden view rooms does not provide eye view access to the sea but is part of the tranquil environment.

The resort also boast a tree house to rent out. Spending night can be noisy in the tree house. If you can handle the noise it’s a great option.

The rooms and cottages does not contain television. A common room gives access to the only television set available in the resort..!!!

Surroundings

Hammocks.. Hammocks.. Hammocks..!! Lot of Hammocks around the resort. Perfect to take siesta in the afternoon.

Lots of coconut and other trees in the resort. Gives you ample shade to roam around the area.

Catch a nice view of the sea from the tree top.

Few places to relax

Look another smaller tree top area.

Restaurant and Food

Toddy Taper sea side restaurant serves delicious food for you. The food is little pricey. Definitely avoid the buffet option. The prices are ridiculous.

Delicious looking Poha for breakfast.

Some bread and Egg bhurji..!!

Recreation facility

Carrom time. Thankfully all coins were present.

Table tennis and table soccer.

Open air badminton cum basketball court. Time for

Kids play area.

Manori Beach

Manori beach is just a stone throw away from the resort. The beach is generally vacant. Almost private.

Contrast this with a crowded Juhu beach.

Swimmers beware. The sea is rocky.

A rare gola-wala in sight.

Green house and plantation

A small green house with lot of lovely looking plants.

Hotel food are prepared using home grown fresh veggies. No wonder they taste delicious.

Some great looking flowers.

It was a very relaxing 3 day get away from busy city life. Glad I choose Manoribel Resort. Lack of TV, internet connectivity and nature friendly atmosphere helped re-live old memories.

Links for more information

• Manoribel Beach Resort
• Manoribel room tariffs
• Manoribel Beach Resort Review

The resort and surroundings

Manoribel resort sits peacefully between the lush green coconut palms laden with hammocks and the deep blue Arabian Sea. The place is reminiscent of old Goan style life epitomize by the relaxing attitude and peaceful atmosphere which is absent from the Mumbai city.The environment at the resort is very pleasant. It contains a greenhouse, kitchen garden, sea facing restaurant, few sports facilities, playing area for kids and direct access to the Manori beach.

Basic Amenities

The resort contains all the basic amenities but don’t expect five star features. There is no gym, spa or swimming pool. The lack of television set in the rooms gives you good opportunity to spend some quality time with the family. If you still want to catch some important TV shows or daily news, you can do the same in the TV room situated next to the Restaurant.

The beach can be directly accessed from the resort. Entrance to the beach is guarded round the clock so you can be assured of the safety inside the resort. There are lots of hammocks all around the resort, almost one for every couple of coconut trees.

Rooms and Cottages

The rooms at the resort are big, clean and air conditioned. They are designed to be old fashioned to give you the relaxed Goan feel – antique locks, old black switches, cane furniture and beds with mosquito nets. The cottages are spacious, with elaborated veranda where you can sit and chat or gaze towards the sea. Bathrooms are decent with basic toiletries and round the clock hot or cold water.

Reception and Room Service

The staff is nice and helpful. However, we had our share of issues with them. On one occasion, we wanted our food delivered in the room but had to convince the room service couple of times citing mosquito infestation at the restaurant as a reason.

Room service takes forever to come. What’s more irritating is you need to remind them of your order couple of times to make sure it gets delivered. Average turnaround time for your order is anywhere between 30 minutes to one hour.

Recreational facilities

The resort contains a small sports area and a kid’s tree house. They have couple of table tennis boards, a carom board, an outdoor badminton and basketball court. In addition, they keep cricket gear and footballs. The table tennis area is well lite during the evening also.

Restaurant and Food

“Toddy Taper” is a beach facing restaurant where you can enjoy your lunch and snacks.The food is prepared from home grown veggies and spices wherever possible. The restaurant serves good Goan and Malvani food.

The food is very costly with little value for money. For example, the only option for water at the room is mineral water for 40 rupees a piece. Considering the place is little isolated, the high price leaves you with no other choice. Thankfully the food portions served are quite handful. Compare to the buffet, a-la-carte is a better option.

We found the following dishes delicious: Vegetable biryani, vegetable kolhapuri, fish platter and curry, coconut cake, kaju tarts, chicken dishes (butter chicken, chicken chilly) and breakfast (poha, aloo paratha, puribhaji, french fries).

The following dishes left our mouth sour:Fish food (which is a surprise), paneer dishes, Chinese dishes, Khichadi (very bland), pakodas and egg bhurji (too oily).

Manori Beach

The resort is located right on the Manori beach. Manori beach is rocky with not-so-blue-waters. Thankfully it is very conducive for beach sports, morning jogs and evening walks. I would not advise swim or bath in the beach as it could be risky, especially during the high tide. The beach is sparsely crowded making it a good place to enjoy privacy.

Room Tariff

Weekend rates are very high. On week days you can expect some discount but still it would be on the higher side for say the college crowd. This is a good thing as it limits inflow of party maniacs and drunken mobs compare to other cheaply priced nearby locations. Check out the tariff card on their website for exact rates.

The resort does not provide online reservation service. The only option if you want to physically book the rooms is to go visit their Crawford market office. Thankfully you can reserve your room over phone and confirm it by crediting their HDFC bank account. You can ask for an email receipt once the payment is completed and the booking is done.

Travel Tips

1. Cottage 4, 4A, 5, 5A are located closest to the beach and provides direct view of the sea.
2. They do not deliver food in the room. However, you can convince them for dinner citing mosquitoes in the restaurants as the reason.
3. Every cottage contains a small tub filled with water to wash sand off your feet before you enter the cottage.
4. In the evening, mosquitoes are a big problem. Do carry a repellent if you plan to step outside your room.
5. The resort does not serve hard liquor only beer. Please carry your own booze.
6. Tree house can get noisy and disturbing during the night.
7. There is a small shop just outside the resort where you can buy mineral water for 15 rupees instead of 40 rupees on the menu.

Links for more information

• Manoribel Beach Resort
• Manoribel room tariffs
• Manoribel Beach Resort photo gallery

Conclusion

Manoribel is an ideal getaway near Mumbai. I have to be honest. The absence of crowd, television and internet connection was a welcome relief to my otherwise busy schedule. This is a perfect place to spend some quality time with the family talking and playing together. And the best part of the resort is direct access to the almost private Manori beach.

Take a short siesta on one of the hammocks, feel the cool sea breeze and watch the beautiful sunset. Lovely..! Absolutely lovely..!! Best sea shore hotel for visit with your family and loved ones.I visited the place between 16^th to 18^th January 2012 and would rate it – 4/5 stars.

Then, I got busy moving into new house, setting up the furniture, other stuffs and most importantly got married. This kept me away from my blogging and web designing activities for quite some time. Negligence cost me a lot. At least I could have savor my website in stagnant state by keeping the hosting package alive. I lost lot of content from my active sites Smartonlinetips.com, Smartblogtips.com, Stumbledigg.com and Thinkjayant.com.

The journey back

Now that I have been able to accommodate some time out, I have started to look back at my passion. With nothing to lose, I began hunting down my old hard drives for any backups available. I was able to restore some content from a backup for my Smartblogtips.com website. It is close to 120 odd articles and is still serving good information for its viewers. I hosted them back and are available for all to consume. The other sites for now are just domain placeholders for now.

I will spend some time chalk out a plan. Also, need to figure out what to do with the remaining domain names. Do I really want to use the same domains or some other ones which would better align with my current plans. This might take some time which I am willing to provide. Just want to make sure I have a persistent plan ready for my blogging endeavors.

Source: PostSecret App