What's your idea of blissful sleep? For us, it's about hitting the sack after a gruelling day and entering so deep into La La Land that you don't know what transpires in between the time that you drifted off and when you wake up with the sunlight streaming gently into your room. Forty winks pass by in the blink of an eye, it seems. And that's almost the sort of experience we have at Indie Stays, a new address in Santacruz that has different accommodation options, when we spend the night in a dormitory there to check the place out. Except, someone switches the AC off at one point when we are passed out, meaning we wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night. But more on that in a bit.

We reach the place late on a Monday evening straight after work. Apart from the prominent branding on the façade, it's otherwise a nondescript building. A flight of steps leads up to the reception desk on the first floor, which is in a vibrant room that also serves as a co-working space. It doesn't look like it's been used much, but then the place is still new, so maybe word will eventually get around. The lady manning the reception tells us that the dorm room we are interested in will cost us '1,000 if we make an online booking and '1,899 otherwise. But when we whip our phone out to do the needful, she tells us, "It's okay, sir. You can pay '1,000 anyway," meaning we feel a warm sense of hospitality right from the word go.