Spiritual Journey to India

My friend and I just came back from India on a 12 day tour of five cities, New Delhi, Udaipur, Jaipur, Agra, and Varanasi. This travel agent worked with me to customize the itinerary to fit my requirements. Together we created a perfect trip. (And, my agent was extremely patient with us as we made innumerable changes to the itinerary!) 

What made it exceptional was the level of detail and coordination that my agent and his team did to ensure that his company representatives met us at each city, introduced us to our drivers, and took us to the hotel and checked us in. The representatives then introduced us to our guides.  Nothing was left to chance, including giving us a local phone with the numbers of representatives already entered. It was perfect!

The local guides were great, very professional, and passionate about the history and culture of their city. Plus, they were fun! We had the right combination of touring the cities, palaces, forts, and shrines balanced with shopping and relaxing at the hotels.

We just finished a 40 day trip to India (February 2017) visiting Delhi, Bharatpur, Agra, Jaipur, Amritsar, Varanasi and Kolkata along with eight National Parks (Keoladeo, Ranthambore, Pench, Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Panna, Sunderban and Kaziranga) and traveled by either car or rail (we had five separate nights on a train plus one evening train ride). We had spent a couple of months in early 2016 planning this trip with this travel agency and all we can say is that everything worked out perfectly.  There was someone to meet us at the Delhi airport and there was always someone to take us to the train and to meet us when the train arrived.  The drivers and guides always showed up on time as planned/or as agreed.  The drivers were outstanding. They were safe drivers and also polite, courteous and informative. The guides were also outstanding, friendly, polite and very, very knowledgeable.  The hotels chosen for us with the exception of one were excellent although in the National Parks the accommodation may run out of hot water.  We are extremely satisfied with every aspect of this trip and would definitely use this company again.  We were in contact via e-mail as well as phone and I always up to date as to the status of the trip. 

After last year amazing experience with Delhi, Rishikesh, Varanasi, Agra and Jaipur this year we decided to continue with Zicasso and explore South India. Together with my wife (57y and 50y) we travelled through Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. We slept in 11 hotels and by car made about 1000 km.

I have firmly and honestly state that from first to last minute we were confronted with first class services which were based on very good choice of hotels, very communicative driver, highly knowledgeable local guides and fantastic people of India.

Itinerary of our trip was fine-tuned in three rounds and implemented to reality by this travel company, Zicasso´s Indian local partner. Many thanks to the company's CEO for perfectly prepared itinerary.  I believe that this awesome experience started with his empathy and understanding for our expectations.

Let me start with great appreciation and thanks to travel company's. Since my wife is a pediatrician and our son is a child with special needs, we had a wish to visit Jivadhara Institute of Neuro Development and Research near Kochi, starting point of our trip. As we later experienced, it was not easy to set up this meeting. But thanks to our travel company, who sent over his employee; finally, we succeeded and had a fantastic two hour meeting with Sister Mary and Center tour. Great inspiration!

Other remarkable moment which made a great contribution to our contentment was our driver. Our driver was fluent in English and for us was not just a driver but also a good travel mate with whom we could discuss any topic of Indian life and local culture. Couple of times our driver recommended us unplanned stops at places which might be interesting for us. He was a very skilled, clam and safe driver having a history over 1,5 Mkm. We enjoyed our time with him very much.

Selection of hotels was great and at least 10 of 11 had its local boutique charm. No sterile hotel chains where you are not sure about the country you are currently in. Just to mention the wellness resort, our Kerala hotel or our Tamil Nadu Villas! Great, great, great!

As expected, selected city guides were real professional. Most of them university graduated and their knowledge of sites and history was absolute.

Another moment we enjoyed very much was the local cuisine. Yes, it is spicy, but spices, colors and all the hustle is an integral part of India. I recommend, don’t ask for “less spice”. Then you are at risk that you are neglecting a very essential moment of India. We brought home some 2 kg of Indian spices. 

My trip was not organized very well, and although I had paid to be in 4 or 5 stars accommodations at times they felt more like 1 star accommodations. In Varanasi, the hotel room had mold on the walls, no hot water, and the room was dirty and infested with bugs.   Although,  my travel company knew that there was curfew in Varanasi, the day I had arrived there, they neglected to inform me about it, and to arrange for another hotel to stay in.  Because of the curfew, no car was allowed to drive in the center of the city. In Judhpur, the hotel provided his guests ear plugs.  Even with the ear plugs I could not sleep there because it was so noisy.   All night i could hear dogs barks, goats and the hum and drum of the old city.  Who wants to be stuck in the noisy old city when there are plenty of others hotels with beautiful gardens and quit rooms like  the hotels by by Taj.   In Bhuj the room in my hotel was unacceptable. All the rooms on the entire floor, except mine where being remodeled and in a process of being painted.  There was a strong smelly paint smell all over the floor that felt like poison, and I had to asked the staff at the reception to tell  the construction workers to stop to work at 22:30 because they kept working and knocking on the walls at all hours. In Mumbai, my travel company booked me a small noisy room at the tower of the Taj Mahl hotel. needless to say, that the receptionist at Taj hotel upgraded my room and changed my room to the Palace side of the hotel, where the rooms, are larger and much quieter. When I stayed at Aurangabad for two nights, although my flight to Mumbai was schedules only to 21:00 at night, no late check out was arranged for me.  I arranged it myself and paid extra myself.

When I was traveling in Rajasthan,   During my stay in  Ranthambore,  I found out that my driver was drunk and could not drive me back to my hotel.   The drunk driver demanded a cut in one of the textile stores I had placed an order.   Since the driver was drunk, he could not drive my husband and me to Jaipur.  Another Driver had to be found and our trip got delayed.   The drunk driver was dismissed later from the travel company. 

The inner flights in India were also organized very badly.  Instead of booking all our flights with Air India which would have allowed us to have 25KG for person, since we have Star alliance membership, most of our flights were booked with chipper airlines that only allow each person 15 KG.  The 15 kg is not just for the checked in luggage, it is a combination of the checked luggage plus all the hand bags.  We ended paying thousands of Rupees extra for our luggage.

   Although I was billed and paid to a luxurious trip, my travel company cut in every corner and booked us  a trip in a one to two  stars  many nights of the trip.

First of all I want to thank our agent for leaping us organizing our trip. He was very nice, helpful and professional.

We had a great trip in India, from November 4th to 14th 2015. What we really enjoyed with our travel agency is that the drivers and the guides were courteous, polite, nice and always on time. The car was great,  very clean and very comfortable for the 2 of us. We enjoyed the daily calls from our travel agency to make sure everything was great. All the temples/ mosques or other buildings or museums were worth visiting. We used good and reliable domestic flights ( IndiGo and jet airway ). Always having a travel agency representative in the hotels or at the airports waiting for us, helping us with hotels or flight formalities were a nice help and a nice asset. Our travel agency clearly tried to make things as smooth as possible, which is always a challenge in India..............

However we think there is still room for the company to improve, especially in communication with us. As an example, they told us at the last minute that our Bollywood show was canceled because of Diwali festival. We cannot understand that this can be a last minute announcement. If they had checked before they would have noticed that that show was canceled in advance. Same thing for our cooking class which was marked for lunch on our program, and while we were driving to that class, we were told that the class was rescheduled in the evening. In parallel the cook told us that the class had always been scheduled for the evening. This show that they do not check a few days ahead to make sure that their timetable is correct. As a consequence we totally lost an whole morning in Agra, staying at the hotel waiting for the class, instead of visiting that great city. Same problem with our timing on the day we left Varanasi, flying to Delhi then driving to Agra. We left Delhi at 1 pm( totally on time vs schedule ) drove 4 hours to Agra, where we were supposed to visit the Agra fort. But the Agra fort closes at 5 pm. So this timetable was not working. As a consequence the day after, we had only 5 hours to visit the Taj Mahal, the Agra fort , drive to Fakepur sikri and visit the palace. We visited those 3 exceptional monument while running and felt extremely frustrated! Most probably the 3 most beautiful things to visit in India and we had only 5 hours. In parallel our guide that day was our least favorite. He was not very kind with us, just telling we have to go, we have to go...those 5 hours were the biggest failure of our trip...in Agra, we went to a choky Donny dinner. we had no idea what it was  about,and thought it was only a restaurant with specialties from Rajastan. but in fact it is a huge fair, with the restaurant inside. If we had known about it, we would not have wore fancy clothes, as we eat sitting on a cushion and there is dust everywhere...those are little details, but the travel agency should better describe this in the timetable. Clearly explain how many hours of driving between 2 cities, some details like what to wear at special places, check in advance all our reservations ( Bollywood show, cooking class) because a last minute change is really frustrating , make sure we can do everything in one day to avoid running while visiting monuments. My agent had told me to buy souvenirs in Jaipur( carpets, clothes...) but did not tell us why. In fact in Jaipur everything is much cheaper because there is much less taxes than in other cities. This should be clearly explained beforehand to everyone, to avoid buying in Delhi which is very expensive and not the same quality as in Jaipur!!!! Another problem is the luggage limit on domestic flights . We took a flight from Jaipur to Delhi on our last day, before heading back to Newark. Unfortunately on Jetairway, you can only have 1 luggage per person, 15kg/ luggage. We had to pay $150 extra to travel, which represent 4% of our total trip. The travel agency should warn us in advance or consider another company when they know that we have all our luggage with presents with us just before heading back to the US.....the hotels were very good ( The hotel in Delhi is very modern and comfortable ), the hotel in Agra was our favorite, the hotel in Rajputana was very good too, but surprisingly in the middle of Agra . The hotel in Varanasi was not a good choice, as it is very old, dated, very noisy and the food ( breakfast and lunch) is really not good.our favorite guide was our guide in Agra, he is really great, explaining everything, very friendly. Our Diwali event in a restaurant, organized by our agency was great and memorable. Our cooking class was amazing . The travel agency should work much more with the chef in Agra. Not only the cooking class was good, but it was just the 2 of us with the chef and it was followed by a dinner with the chef and his wife, eating all the dishes we had prepared. We felt very welcomed and special....so to sum up, it was a great trip but the communication between us and the travel agency should be improved, the schedule should be checked in advance by them to make sure it is realistic....