Luxury India Travel Agent Review: Jaiselmer, Aurangabad, Agra, The Taj Mahal, Chhatra Sagur, Varanasi, Nizzamuddin basti....

This travel agency specialized in India did a really spectacular job on our trip to India. The nuts and bolts -- hotels, drivers, guides, airlines, train tickets, etc. -- worked very smoothly. Our travel agent Susan's first hand knowledge of every site was really helpful in itinerary planning, so that we did not arrive at Agra or Aurangabad on a day the site is closed. Of course you can figure this out yourself from the guidebook, but it is so easy to miss when planning on your own. Susan did a great job of customizing our itinerary so we could to see everything when it is open, while not making our journey route insanely complicated. India is so huge and there is so much to see that we had to prioritize destinations. This was hard to do as there was so much we wanted to see. Susan was an enormous help in making those decisions. After much discussion about options, we followed her judgment to leave out Amritsar and use those days instead to go to Jaiselmer and Aurangabad. These are destinations not available on most group tours because getting to these places takes a lot of time. They turned out to be, along with Agra and Varanasi, the highlights of out trip, and it was Susan's judgment we followed in choosing these places over other more standard options. We also decided to follow Susan's judgments about taking a break in the middle of our trip to stay a few nights in farm areas. She told us we would be exhausted after the first week despite our being "in great shape" and being really curious and energetic tourists. She was so right. The time change, the flood of stimulation that is India, the "otherness" of it all really wore us out. We welcomed the downtime at a couple of ex-maharajah summer palaces to go bird watching, visit local villages, and just chill. Our special requests to Susan were fully honored by the in-country agency that actually books the guides and drivers, etc, so we were happy about that. Finally, because Susan and the in-country agent book such a large volume, we were high priority for the hotels -- we were upgraded several times. We walked into the Lake Palace in Udaipur and got upgraded to a Royal Suite, which was just too fantastic! On the negative side, regarding this India tour company -- well, I really can't think of anything. Susan really listened to what we told her about what was important to us. I could tell by the way she customized our itinerary and kept refining it in response to our comments. That is probably the most important reason we chose her over the other options for a travel agent.