Review: Luxury Trip to India, Agra, Jaipur, Varanasi, Ranthambore, Kerala, Tiger Safari, Taj Mahal

We would not have 5 and 6 hours drives from area to area.  We would not reserve the houseboat.  

TRAVEL COMPANY COMMENTS:

Dear Ms Donna M

We thank you for offering your valuable feedback on Zicasso!

We are so glad to know that you liked the overall accommodation, guides and other services in various cities. We are also delighted to know that you liked our assistance service and frequent feedback process over phone. 

After analysing your review, we see that you had minor issues in following areas

1. Driving Conditions

2. Seating in Internal Flight

3. Safari in Ranthambore National Park

4. English Fluency of some of the guides

5. Houseboat Experience

We would like to answer each of your queries in the areas mentioned above and then finally conclude our point of view with improvement areas

1. Driving Conditions: We regret the inconvenience caused to you during your drive from Agra to Ranthambore. Please note that we had suggested a drive between these two places because there is a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage monument that comes en-route. Please note that the driving conditions in India are different than that in USA. It may seem a bit chaotic but our drivers are experienced in driving on such roads.We shall further direct them to better their services. 

2 Seating in Flight: Please note that all internal flights (except 1) did not have business/ first class in them. There are only economy class seats in most of these flights. For one sector (Varanasi-Agra), business class seats would have been possible but the price of this flight would rise 7 times as compared to Economy class fare. For flight duration of less than 1 Hour, we felt that this additional expense is not worth it. But, we have noted this point. We shall suggest the Business class fare option to our clients in the future who are willing to spend additional for better leg space. 

3. Safari in Ranthambore National Park: Please note that we never highlighted the safari to be a Tiger Show/ Safari. Since it is a national park and considering the dense topography of Indian jungles, the animal sightings is always a matter of chance. In the Ranthambore travel advisory shared to you on 23 Dec, we had clearly mentioned this. The excerpts from that section is below

Sightseeing of Animals: The sighting of animals will be purely on the basis of your Luck. Unlike Africa, Indian topography is dense and the sightseeing of animals may be difficult. Please note that as a travel company we shall not be responsible if you do not get to see any Tigers or animals in the national park. 

4. Fluency of Guides: Please note that our company has a very stringent mechanism of selecting the guides at various places. We had clearly mentioned in “India Travel tips” section (shared on 23 Dec) that the fluency of guides will vary across India and the fluency will be not be very good in smaller./ remote places like Ranthambore, Houseboat etc. The excerpts from that section is below

“The quality of guides in terms of knowledge, fluency will vary across India. In smaller cities, the guides may not be very fluent in English and lack knowledge other than the monuments/ places that are part of the itinerary. In the state of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Leh, North East India, Karnataka, etc the guide in smaller places may have a typical accent which may be a bit difficult to understand initially. Our team benchmarks and reviews the guides on a continuous basis and only selects the best guides that are available in respective cities. “

5 Houseboat Experience: We extremely regret the inconvenience caused at the Houseboat. Please note that this is the most opulent and expensive Houseboat run by this hotel chain. Such an experience is rare with them and unfortunately it occurred with you. We have written to their management about this and they are apologetic about this experience. 

We would consider following Improvement areas:

1. We shall highlight the Internal flight classes and possible price of Upgradation to Business class in our interaction with guests. 

2. We shall include a Road Advisory information in our itinerary so that our guests have an idea about the condition of Roads in some parts.

3. We shall further try to improve our roster of Guides in Smaller towns and provide feedback to existing guide to improve on their fluency. 

We thank you again for the feedback and we look forward to serving you again in near future for your next trip to North India/ Tibet. We assure you that we shall try our level best in offering the best experience to you the next time you tour with us.

Regards,

Your Travel Operators