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What Our Clients Have To Say :
I read the following quote from the late PM Nehru: “India is a land of contrasts, of some very rich and many very poor people, of modernism and medievalism. India is not a poor country. She is abundantly supplied with everything that makes a country rich, yet her people are very poor.” Those words were quotes on a page for me before this trip. Your tour made it come alive for me and for Jason. It was beyond expectations.
India moved me and changed me. I have never been in a land of such contradictions: of such modernity in its hotels, malls, and offices, and such primitiveness in the villages; of mobile connections everywhere and olden approaches to farming; of such beauty in the hills, and such ugliness in the shanty towns and gypsy encampments; of such wealth at the palaces and such poverty at the rail stations; of such religious piety everywhere while still being governed democratically.
Thank you, thank you for creating not just a vacation tour, but creating an experience. Visiting palaces, forts, and World Heritage sites is a vacation tour, but we got much more. How else to describe the following but to call it an experience?:
- Jostling through hordes of people, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, 2-wheelers, cars, and cows with the sounds of horns blaring all around you in the bazaars of Jodhpur and Jaipur
- Drinking masala tea with fresh cow’s milk made over an open fire with the women of a Brahmin village
- Having a camel guide snap a dozen shots of me in quick succession because he didn’t realize that my camera can shoot at 5 frames per second with the shutter button fully depressed, and at the same time having his young grandson and friends whisper and throw dirt clods at Jason and then run away
- Talking for half an hour with a shopkeeper about “love marriage” versus “arranged marriage” .
- Trying to figure out how to get past a cow and her bull in the narrow alleyways of Varanasi to get back to our hotel (couldn’t do it without the help of a young man pushing them to the side)
- Standing in intense heat to observe a body getting cremated at the cremation ghats in Varanasi
- Talking for 30 minutes with an older gentleman about Indian politics, corruption, and how the good old days are gone
If I were a more adventurous traveler, then I’m sure I would have had a lot more experiences but what you put together was perfect for Jason and me.
As I sit here at the edge of the ocean writing this, it’s hard to believe that a few days ago I was 7000 miles away in a place that is so completely different than here having experiences that I will never have here. And yet only a click of a “send” link or a punching in of a phone number connects us. The world is truly becoming flat.
I cannot thank you enough, Tapas and your staff, especially Raman, for putting together such an extraordinary trip and for ensuring that everything went smoothly. Every detail was taken care of, and we felt extremely safe, secure, and well taken care of. You have surely enriched our lives.
Ms. Lenny Toups, USA
ljtoups@raytheon.com
Dear Tapas,
Please find attached the Tour Evaluation Report.
With one exception, the Pugmark Resort, which you quickly and effectively resolved, we were extremely happy with the Tour and saw many sides of Norh West India which would have been impossible had we flown between destinations or completed the trip by train.
The hours we spent on the road were not what we are used to, trying to kill the time with games or magazines, but riveted instead to the road ways and the continuous display of Indian daily life which we found fascinating. Doing this in air-conditioned comfort with a cool water or cold beer there for the asking was just fantastic. The air-conditioned Mini Bus and Mahender our driver made this our personal sanctuary amidst the ever changing temperatures and traffic conditions.
The train trips we took were also a definition in good planning and organisation, particularly the trip from Delhi to Amritsar which we almost missed but did not due to Mahender, our driver, delivering us through the Delhi traffic and Raman organising the Porters who whisked our luggage and ourselves from one side of Delhi station to the other in the ‘rush hour’ truly a miracle achieved. This was enhanced by our arrival at our seats, the air-conditioned comfort, the delivery of cool water and later tea and a full Indian dinner, repeated from Kalka to Delhi, which made both rail journeys extremely comfortable.
The ‘rail car’ trip to Shimla from Kalka was a prize and our thanks to Mohit for organising that along with the Amritsar, Chandigarh and Shimla elements of the Tour their calm and controlled manner easily guided us through and gave us an appreciation of the locality. Visits to the Golden Temple, Wagah Border and the Silk Road towards Tibet from Shimla were highlights of this element of the tour.
Each journeys end whether delivered or met and transferred to our hotels smoothed the entry into the hotels which you had booked for us all of which were comfortable and appropriate to the geographic location with the Capital hotels of Delhi and Shimla outstanding at International 5* level.
In the dusk on our first safari we saw a tiger!! The memory will last forever enhanced by the setting in which we saw it, Ranthambore, certainly a Jewel in the Crown of India. Dev Villas was the sanctuary we sought and provided us with cool verandahs and tea from which to set out on our dawn and dusk safaris a truly special place.
All our local guides were exemplary and their specialist knowledge gave us a detailed understanding of each place we visited which we would never have had were we to have visited on our own.
Without doubt your team provided excellent pre-trip advice and on trip support which we valued greatly as a safety net which was due to your excellent organisation seldom needed.
The icing on the cake was the visit to your home and the welcome we received from your family it is no small thing to open up your home to strangers an it must take its toll on your family life but we would not have missed it as it set the tone for the holiday. Please thank Krishna for the wonderful meal and I hope Arjun is feeding the fish on a regular basis!! He is a credit to you both.
Many thanks and best wishes
Jim and Halina Morton, UK
jim@66rt66.fsnet.co.uk
Margaret and Stephen Tripp
Hello Tapas, Pal and all
Firstly, I want to say a huge thank you to you all for your arrangement of our tour. I want to provide you with some feedback.
Our tour leader, Digvijay (DV) Singh, and our driver Deepak and his assistant Mohan were all marvellous. The service that each of them provided to all of us throughout the tour was of the highest quality and we will always be grateful to the three of them for helping to make the tour so enjoyable. Nothing was too much trouble for any of them.
So far as Robyn and I are concerned the tour was everything we could have wanted and much more. There were so many highlights that it is not possible to single out just a few. Every problem that we encountered was quickly and efficiently solved for us the moment we mentioned it to DV. At one point Robyn could have been in real trouble when both her blood sugar testing machine and her insulin injection pen ceased working. DV very quickly located a source of replacement equipment that was exctly identical to the broken units, enabling her to continue controlling her insulin without even having to familairsie herself with different equipment. The rooms we were allocated at each hotel were all of high quality, as were the hotels themselves. The fact that not once did we have to carry our luggage is just one of the marvellous touches that made the entire trip so pleasant for us. We would most certainly use your services again. Indeed Robyn is very keen to do another tour to other (probably southern ) parts of India in the future.
I don't know how many photographs were taken by the group as a whole, but I took 3663 and Robyn took 2601! So, needless to say it will take a long time for me to go through them all and do things with them. I have set up a Flickr Website where I hope most members of our tour group will eventually put some of their best images. there is not much on it yet, but the Webpage is http://www.flickr.com/photos/rajasthanromance/. I am also putting some of my images on my own Flickr Website http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianrope.
It has been a great joy to deal with you all, and it also was a delight to meet Tapas in person whilst we were in Delhi.
Many, many thanks for everything.
My kindest regards and very best wishes
Brian Rope, Australia
winfocus@ozemail.com.au
The tour was very well organized and the personal tour given by the people we spent most time with was more than perfect. All hotels were very special, especially the ones in remote places and the sardargarh fort / palace which is a small jewel in the middle of the trip. The personal touch of the wife of the noble who owns the property was amazing.
Our driver Anil was particularly good, attentive, friendly, accommodating and a wonderful man. We had complete confidence in his driving , ability in all circumstances.Shailesh in Delhi was our favourite guide + the man in Udaipur. We felt that the woman in Delhi and the man in agra were not as personally friendly although knowledgeable.
Overall, this trip has been a dream come true. Thanks to trinetra tours, they were very open to accommodating us, not the otherway around. India is a complex , diverse country. But mostly, it is energetic and exciting while maintaining its history and passion for the past. There is still room for work with poverty.It is sad and demeaning for such a wonderful country.
Nancy & Bob Miller, Canada
millerneighbour@rogers.com
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