Nepal & India Tours

Awesome! Totally awesome! My wife and I just returned from a three week trip in India and Nepal planned by this Asia travel company. I was so impressed by the planning that I visited their office in New Delhi after the first couple days in New Delhi. Our agent was the person who did the work. Magnificant! We visited New Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Varanasi, Lumbini, Chitwan, Kathmandu and Baktapur. 

1. Staff: always professional and well dressed; on time (if they say they will meet you at 8:00 AM then someone will be there at least by 8:00 AM); polite; accommodating to our needs and changes in the itinerary; knowledgable about where to visit (i.e. shopping!); 

2. Transport: cars were comfortable in Delhi, Jaipur, Agra. Once you start to move into the interior of the country further the transport (hired cars) were not quite as nice. But, alas, we arrived safe and sound. 

3. Hotels: Favorite hotels were the Trident in both Jaipur and Agra. Very nice. The rest of the hotels were fine with the exception of Hotel Everest in Kathmandu which is very very outdated. I stayed there 23 years ago on a trip and I am not sure they changed the carpet in the hallways since that time. The Kasari Resort in Chitwan was an oasis! 

4. Guides: Very good guides in each city (except Varanasi). 

Overall, I give this company terrific praise for planning and executing the trip. This was a peak experience for my wife and I. Thanks. 

Tom M

This travel agent did a great job from the first day we communicated though to the end of our trip.  All was executed as agreed to.  Her recommendations, guides, useful travel notes helped make our trip so memorable.  We traveled to Mumbai, Varanasi, Sarnath, Agra, Jaipur, Chhatra Sagar, Udaipur, and Delhi.  We had the perfect timing to participate in the Diwali Festival in Udaipur which was colorful and wonderful to see the local customs surrounding this event.  We then traveled onto Bhutan.  Sitting on the Northern side of the flight from Delhi to Thimphu gave us a birds eye view of Mount Everest - spectacular!!  The food on the trip was over the top wonderful.  The drivers & tour guides our travel agent arranged were top notch, polite and friendly - all our needs were and more.  We stayed at all 5 star hotels which was the only way to go - we should have scheduled more time to take in this one of a kind worldly hotels.

My four rating reflects some disconnect between the agreed itinerary we set up with our travel company and what happened on the ground in India and Nepal. I'm not sure if that was the travel company problem or that of its partner and its subcontractors. That said, any issues we raised were addressed quickly and mostly to our complete satisfaction. 

Overall, I'd say that travel in this part of the world is difficult. Traffic in the cities is impossible! Also, we found poor air quality most everywhere, but particularly in Delhi and to some extent in Agra. I had visited the Taj nearly 38 years earlier and a comparison of photos from that trip and our latest underline the air quality problem. (Nevertheless, the Taj is magnificent!) While the travel was difficult and sometimes pretty exhausting, the trip lived up well to our expectations. We wanted an adventure and we got it! I am particularly interested in Eastern philosophies and religions and it was a bonanza on that count. I learned much.  The temples and palaces were amazing, and I loved the vibrant colors everywhere, from saris to spices.  Our travel agency was good to work with in setting up our trip, patient and accommodating. We worked on the itinerary for a number of months. The guides, transfer agents, and drivers in both India and Nepal were generally terrific. Not once during the entire time was anyone other than perfectly punctual.  Some seemed exceptionally well informed -- including our guide through Mumbai's Dharavi slum, who had lived there himself for more than a dozen years. We nicknamed our guide in Mumbai "sadhu" -- both because of his appearance (rail thin, beard, long hair) but also the depth of his knowledge about Hinduism and his ability to communicate that in terms we could grasp. We spent six days travelling by car with our driver who we came to appreciate enormously as our friend and guardian. As for hotels, we loved the hotels in Katmandu and Udaipur. We were only slightly less impressed with the hotel in Varanasi. The hotels in Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur, were quite good. The hotel in Pushkar was fine though located a little far from town. The hotel in Pokhara, Mumbai, and  in Bangalore were acceptable but not more. 

From the moment my husband and I arrived, and throughout the entire trip there was a company representative awaiting us, guiding us to every destination with kindness and professionalism. We knew we wanted a custom-built trip and we didn't have a lot of time to work with, so this company was a great fit for our needs. We also didn't want to take a big group tour and be stuck on a bus with a bunch of strangers but be able to stay as long as we wanted at separate destinations and ask whatever questions we wanted. We saw Kathmandu, New Delhi, Agra, and Varanasi all over the course of 10 days and while it was busy, it was never an overwhelming pace. We were even able to add an additional destination at the end of our trip to see Sarnath, for no extra cost. Our guides were extremely well informed and when we would ask a question at times we would marvel at the depth of information about the country and the culture that they would share with us. I can't say enough good things about the accommodations of our hotels, the hotel restaurants, the drivers, and especially the guides. Our entrance fees into all of the monuments, our two internal flights, a train ticket, all the gas to transport us, not to mention the long days with guides and drivers- we feel like we got a bargain for the price we paid for the trip of a lifetime! Thank you to all of our wonderful guides who we will forever remember- you touched our lives! 

 My adult son and I just returned from a 12 day trip to India arranged by this travel agent. 

New Delhi - Agra - Fatehpur Sikiri - Chand Baori - Ranthambore National Park - Jaipur - Jodhpur - Jain Temples at Ranakpur - Udaipur - Mumbai

 I requested the step well, Chand Baori.  It should be on all tours driving the road between Agra and Jaipur.  It's not far off the main road and well worth the short detour.

 We were met by tour reps at every stop, every train station, and every airport.  Someone was always there to either meet us upon arrival or to see us off.  The guides were all very good and the drivers were excellent.   

 This agent planned our trip from start to finish and we had a wonderful time.  I'm returning to India next year and she is now making all the necessary arrangements for what will be a  much longer trip.  There's  so more much I want to see.

My husband and I had an extraordinary trip to Nepal and India, thanks to our travel agency. We told them where we wanted to go, and what we wanted to see, and they planned it perfectly for us.  The hotels they found for us were excellent.  The one in Varanasi was right on the Ganges.  We just had to step out of our room in the morning and watch the sun rise!  The one in Jaipur looked like something out of the Arabian Nights!  We even heard the Imam singing the evening and morning prayers out our window.

The guides were all very knowledgeable and accommodating.   I mentioned an interest in Hanuman and the guide told me there was a temple to him close by and took us there.  It wasn't on the itinerary, but he fit it in for us.  The drivers were amazing!  There were no traffic lights in most places, and they had to deal with cows, camels, horses, donkeys, sheep, goats, monkeys, pigs and dogs roaming in the roads, not to mention the traffic.  We took a train from Jhansi to Agra, and we were taken to the station and a representative waited with us, made sure we got on the right train, and that a porter would get us off in Agra.  We weren't expecting that level of service!  Same with airports.  A representative always waited until we were through security before leaving.