Just wanted to report on the hotels in Kerala, specifically in Kollam, Kottayam,
and Trivandrum. My wife and I were on a trip to attend a Christian wedding in Kerala, and our hosts had a local travel agent arrange our hotels, car and driver.

Windsor Castle in/near Kottayam
This property is in a fairly decent location. It is located along a main road, and few minutes by car to the main town area. The property is connected to the "backwaters" directly, and the hotel can arrange for a tour cruise of the backwaters for 500 INR per hour.
The room is decent. TV with some English channels, which include BBC World, HBO (with commercials!), 2 Indian news channels in English, and several star! channels (sports, movies). The bed was ok, and had clean sheets. The bathroom is clean for Indian standards, I suppose, with mildew in between tilings and stains in the tub. Towels also seem to have various color stains on them (mostly brown though, some red), and this was also common in all the hotels we were at in India <puke>
The restaurant had a buffet setup for all three meals. Our rate included breakfast, and the spread included NO MEAT at all in all the mornings we ate there. The breakfast dishes offerer included sanbar, potato curry, breads. Eggs were available made to order. Juice was also offered. We ate dinner there a few times, and the spread was decent, about 10 different dishes, all Indian food, with a stir fried rice or noodle. Ice cream was also available for dessert, in addition to the local ones, like the really sweet brown ball with a donut like center (sorry, forgot the name).

Palm Lagoon near Kollam
This property is also located on the backwaters, about 20 minutes from the main road. The last bit of the road to the hote is dirt, and the steap narrow hill right after the entrance makes getting there ever more exciting, especially in a Tata Indigo. The view is nice, and has a resort type feel. The rooms are standalone cottages, which are a nice size, but contains only 2 single beds combined together to form a "double" bed, with some dirty sheets on top The bathrooms are somewhat a problem in that they have a window that is permanently open, thus allowing all types of insects to come in, including a very large cockroach, in our case We were glad to leave after just one night.
Meals are cooked to order, which your order the day before with the reception attendant. We had dinner and breakfast there, which was fine. We had them cook some curry chicken for dinner, and some omlettes for breakfast.

Highland Hotel, near Kollam
This was the best hotel, room quality wise, so far. The furniture, room and bathroom cleaniness is better than Windsor Castle, but still a far cry from American or Euro standards. The sheets on the bed was clean as far as we cal tell, but did have a strain oilly looking spot at the foot end. The towels were still dirty though. The rooms seem a bit newer, not dated like the Windsor Castle. We only had a chance a to have breakfast here, which is a la carte, and not included in our room rate. Our travel agent said that this place's dinner is suppose to be pretty good, but did not have a chance to sample. Wouldn't mind coming back here again if I need to be in the area in the future.

Saj Lucia in Trivandrum
This hotel, when I first saw from the outside, scared me a bit. They are apparently renovating, the the exterior appearance made it look like it was a dirty apartment building. However, stepping inside, I was relieved, and was further relieved to see the room closer to a low end hotel in the US. The bathroom was cleanest we've seen so far in India, and the towels had no noticeable stains. The TV also had a selection of channels similar to Windsor Castle. There is a shopping complex next to the hotel, with a 1 or 2 restaurants across the street as well.

For the prices we paid, which ranged from 50-100 USD a night in the different hotels, my wife and I expected more, especially in cleaniness, since we paid more to get a "decent" hotel (we're not backpackers!). Star level means nothing, if you've got dirty sheets, and a even dirtier bathroom. A 3 star dump is still a dump. I don't know why most of these hotels have such a problem with cleaniness. Thankfully, it was the first, and hopefully, the last time we'll have to be in Kerala. Backwaters was nice, a 3-5 hour cruise is enough, although if you really want, you can get a house boat for around 2-300 USD a day.

Anyway, I'm trying to not let this affect my future plans to visit Delhi, Jodphur, as I'd like to visit the Taj Mahal and see The Blue City. People kept saying India is cheap, true, and the food certainly was, even in the hotels, but apparently, you can't spend 50-70 USD and get a decent room, like you can in BKK.

Unless you go to five star chains like TAJ and Oberoi the chances of getting a stainless towel and clean bathrooms is remote. Whenever I travel I always try to find a hotel in the area, which has come up in last 1-2 years or sooner. The chances of getting a cleaner room bathroom and stainless towels are relatively high. You visit the same hotel few years later and you will be shocked! The reason for this is firstly India has started advertising itself as a tourist destination only recently (whereas Thailand has been projecting itself as a great tourist location for over a decade now�.so no wonder good hotels). Secondly major clientele for these hotels is Indian travelers or low budget foreign travelers. Indians are anyway not too fussy about cleanliness and overseas travelers have to live with what they get because they don�t have an option. In spite of all these short coming surprisingly India has moved up to top ten tourist destinations (I guess recently it was in top five�correct me if I am wrong). However standards are improving and as more and more overseas travelers started coming in Govt, tourist departments and hotel bodies are taking a notice and we will see more improvement in coming years.