Our 10th wedding anniversary was coming up, and I wanted to do something memorable. I decided to make a booking at The Westin Sohna for myself, my wife Kamalini, and our 7 year old son Rehaan. I had been to the property more than 10 years ago when I worked with Nokia and we had a marketing team outbound there. I had fond memories from back then, and I knew the family would really like it!
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"The Living Room", The Westin Sohna
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So we went to The Westin Sohna on 8th November, 2021, for an overnight stay. I didn't tell Kamalini where I was taking her and Rehaan. I just told her to pack her bags for an overnight stay. The 35 km drive took a little over 1.5 hours from our place in Gurgaon. GPS got us quite flustered because it took us on mud tracks through unending farms! We back-tracked, got onto Sohna Road, and then made our way quite comfortably.
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Buddha Statue, The Westin Sohna
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At the lobby, we were met by someone called Oindrilla. She helped us with our check-in formalities. She greeted us with "Happy 10th anniversary!" We were surprised, because I had done the booking on booking.com, and nowhere had I mentioned anything about it being our anniversary. The mystery ended when we discovered that my wife's sister, Trinayani, had called the property all the way from Macau, and had told them about the occasion, and had asked them to see what they could do to make it special for us!
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Buggies, The Westin Sohna
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The property obliged in every way possible. They upgraded us from a room to a villa, they had a "Happy 10th Anniversary" cake waiting for us in our villa, and they allowed us to do a late check-out the next day!
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Swimming Pool and Bridge, The Westin Sohna
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Swing, The Westin Sohna
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It turned out to be a very memorable and special stay. What we loved about the stay was the sheer expanse of the place, the greenery all around, the beautiful red-brick architecture, the amazingly friendly and helpful nature of the staff, the incredibly large buffet spread at "The Living Room" (we availed of the dinner buffet and the breakfast buffet), the large outdoor pool (Rehaan enjoyed taking a dip in the pool despite the cool weather!), the plethora of activities for kids (Rehaan went on the bouncy castle; there was also a train ride, a pony ride, and various other rides, at an additional cost), the buggies on call (that made life easier, because the property is vast, spread over an amazing 47 acres!), and the charming mini zoo (with emus, geese, guinea fowls, turkeys, rabbits, and guinea pigs - Rehaan enjoyed petting and feeding the emus and the rabbits, and he also fed the geese and the turkeys; the staff member at the mini zoo answered all our queries very patiently and knowledgably, and gave Rehaan food to offer to the animals). We also spotting peacocks in the property. My wife went to the spa for an early morning yoga session. We stayed awake till late at night watching a movie on the large screen TV in our villa (the hotel was kind enough to arrange for an Amazon Firestick to enable us to watch Netflix).
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Emu, The Westin Sohna
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Geese, The Westin Sohna
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Pony, The Westin Sohna
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Oindrilla was of course extremely courteous and helpful, but we were also impressed by the help rendered by Wasim (who kept checking whether we were comfortable in our room), Mayank (the chef at "The Living Room"), and Dalvir (a very warm and helpful staff member at "The Living Room", who took our special meal requests to supplement the buffet). After our return, we also received a warm email from the General Manager, Mr Tusch Daroga, thanking us for our visit and asking for our feedback.
The Westin Sohna is certainly not inexpensive, but the value that we got out of our stay made it worth it. We also had a slight issue of our bathroom floor getting wet each time one of us had a shower, because one of the four sides of the shower cubicle wasn't closed (we had to keep calling housekeeping as a result), but that was a minor irritant in an otherwise great stay!
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Cheese Platter, "The Living Room", The Westin Sohna
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Bakery Items, "The Living Room", The Westin Sohna
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All in all, a delightful experience! A real lesson in hospitality and the art of making guests feel special!
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