Extension – Holy Ganges of Varanasi

I just wanted to send you a note of thanks for doing such a great professional job in arranging and co-ordinating Margaret Davidson’s recent trip to India. As a seasoned traveller and former hotel executive, I am fully aware of all the logistics and details that are essential in making ones travels as rewarding as possible. You have excelled in so many ways, from the initial contact with you, to her safe return home a couple of weeks ago. Her trip was amazing in so many memorable ways thanks in large part to the seamless travel plans that you put into place. Please pass this note on to any that are considering your travel services, as we highly recommend you for your impeccable follow-up and diligence in all that you have done for us. Our heartfelt thanks to you again for a job well done!

Hello, Nazir! Tonight we will be leaving India for Canada and both Hans and I want to thank you personally and your team in India for a marvelous time here.  It has been a trip that we will never forget having seen such interesting places in India and having been witness to a totally different and very interesting land and culture compared to the one we know back home.  We understand now why you are so passionate about your motherland and its people.  We will not forget the people here, the smiles of school children and others, their warmth, kindness, sincerity and hospitality.  How we enjoyed all of the excursions and we were so lucky and took delight in seeing a mother tiger and her three cubs along with riding an elephant at Red Fort in Jaipur! We enjoyed your local guides here very much and our guide throughout the trip Ashish.  What a wonderful man, humorous, entertaining and knowledgeable! Your team leader in Delhi Rajeev has also been very supportive and kind as well and of course nameste to the many other players such as our amazing bus driver, his helper and your drivers to get us back and forth to the airport etc. as they have been exemplary! We were so well received and taken care of! Thank you also for the upgrade to The Grand New Delhi Hotel for our final days as it was not expected. It is very beautiful here and has allowed us time to rest before our departure home. We have come away with new friends too having met other Canadians on this visit, with whom we enjoyed many laughs! May you, and your team continues to thrive and be successful in the years to come. We cannot recommend you more highly. Many Thanks, Sincerely

I can only say Helen and I thoroughly enjoyed our time in India. It was very insightful and not a little unsettling and moving at times. This is as it should be. I had a little list of things I wanted to be able to do with the free time we had, as you know, and I accomplished all of them. The support ‘on the ground’ was good and Yajur was a very good guide. He’s very personable, organized and well informed. Please give him my best regards and convey to him my sincere appreciation for being our Tour Manager. He’s a keeper in my opinion. He provided a lot of very good context and insight into the country and its people as well as its strengths and challenges. His ‘lectures’ on the bus as we traveled I personally found very helpful. They got me thinking, asking questions and engaging him in conversation, when possible, to expand my knowledge (as for me this, along with time on the street, is an important part of travel). He has a lot of useful knowledge of the sites we visited also. That and the local and national newspapers available at the hotels were very helpful in that regard. I read them daily. It was a good way to see the part of India we were able to see, especially given my language limitations and lack of extensive prior knowledge of Indian culture. I had done preparatory reading prior to arriving in India. I came away with a better knowledge base and perspective on a very diverse country of 1.2B people. Enjoyed the accommodation, the food and the services provided also. Increased my tolerance for hot spices (in moderation) and Kingfisher beer too. I really can’t offer anything else beyond what I’ve already said. It was a ‘slice of life’ and I personally was very glad I went. Helen likewise.

Thanks Nazir, we are back tired but entirely satisfied! Where do I start?  You have a tremendous team working for you in India, including Raj, our guide in Darjeleen and of course Ardvid (please excuse my spelling).  Not only were we fully informed about what we were seeing but they all added interesting info regarding the religions, history etc.  I give Ardvid a 42 gun salute (Trust you know what this means with him). What a beautiful man! Went out of his way to satisfy everyone, one of our friends, Val Frost hurt her foot, he obtained a rickshaw for her twice.  Always first on there when meeting us and always counting, does herding cats come to mind. The tour was spectacular!  Know I understand the phrase Incredible India.  Extremes are mind boggling, from extreme poverty to extreme wealth.  The driving!  The cows!  The people!  (we were stopped constantly to have pictures taken with locals.  Always a friendly smile, a wave.  Once instance a school group stopped and sang the Indian National Anthem for us. Hotels and meals super!  The only downside was no tigers at the preserve but to show Ardvid, in Jaipur tried to show us all leopards to make up for lack of tigers, but unfortunately, only one car of the group saw them.  Another example of his need and wish to please all. Thank Raj for arrangements for our last day.  Worked much better than the original plan.  We had two awesome drivers and Raj was always there, even to the point phoning all three groups the night before our departure and then again in the two cars on our way to the airport. One downside was the interesting move of the Prime Minister on the night we departed, canceling 500/1000 rupee notes.  I know Errol got stuck with a couple but I recommended he mail the rupees to you so you could arrange a donation to charity. Please feel free to use me as a reference Nazir if necessary.  You and your group were wonderful from the time we booked until our return.  If you need any clarification regarding the above please let me know but a big THANK YOU again from two extremely satisfied guests.

Namaste Nazir   Thanks for your note. You were certainly right about India being a Trip of a Lifetime and an adventure. We are so glad we went. We saw so many wonderful and awesome sights, and some we would rather not see. We did more adventures for fun, as in our elephant and camel rides, than we could ever imagine doing at home.   Our tour guide, Yujurc, was exceptionally knowledgeable, very patient and always helpful. Our bus driver, Mr. Singh, was amazing to say the least and Surrinder treated us with help and respect and we were always happy to see his very kind smiling face.   India is truly an amazing country with so many diversities and wonders to behold. We would not hesitate to recommend your tour company. We were very well looked after, and we never had to wait for Yujurc to lead us. When he said we were going to go somewhere or do something, that is what we did.   Our flights were long but uneventful. Travel has always been an education for us, never more so than on our trip to India.   Thank you,

Val and I had a wonderful time in India. We thought the tour was great and we managed to see a lot in the given time. The guides and drivers were very professional, knowledgeable and pleasant to be with. Our guide was adaptable when we wanted to change certain aspects of the program.The hotels we stayed in were fantastic. It was nice coming back to them after a day of touring. Highlights for me included Pushkar, Varanasi and the elephant and camel rides. I thought there was a good balance of city/rural life, history, culture and modern information and sites.

I was just editing our Indian photos and thought I should write you a few words of thanks for a great trip. I can't start to imagine the amount of time and effort that went into organizing and creating such a successful and wonderful experience, and I know you played a major part in that. Your negotiations with the Indian government, prior to our trip, to simplify the visa process and your many flights ahead of us, during the trip , to make sure things flowed smoothly were recognized and much appreciated. The India trip was the longest and most expensive trip we have taken and we knew it would be special. Everything, from the accommodations, food and experiences exceeded our expectations. Many of us commented during the trip "it just keeps getting better". This was not just intended to be a sightseeing trip but a trip to experience India, and we experienced things that most people visiting India would never experience. The three days in Kashmir was a lovely way to end the trip. It is a beautiful part of the country and quite different from the rest of India. In spite of it's proximity to Pakistan, heavy security and strong military presence, people seemed happy, relaxed, peaceful and very friendly. We felt very comfortable and thoroughly enjoyed our time there. Thanks again Nazir for helping make this a trip of a lifetime. Looking forward to seeing you again on future trips.

I am finally catching up a bit after my wonderful holiday. I wanted to comment on the excellent care that we experienced through your company. Everything went very smoothly.   Each step of the way we were greeted and thoughtfully escorted through our itinerary. All of the guides were good but the guides in Jaipur, Agra and Varanasi were outstanding as they shared not only the history of the places that we were seeing but also helped us to understand some of their own worldview and cultures.  The itinerary was very good and did show us a variety of the facets of India.   Our guide in Delhi arranged for us to go to the Lodhi Park and that was a real bonus. We both missed being able to walk freely when not on a tour due both to the traffic and to the insistence of men wanting to take us shopping in their rickshaws and cabs-- so that park was a delight.   Varanasi was the highlight for both of us! We enjoyed the home meal that we had in Jaipur as it gave us a glimpse of the women's lives. So much to learn about a very different culture!   I would definitely recommend Explore India to other travelers.

My husband, Allan Mayer and I, would like to commend you for your extremely well-planned and well-executed Impressions of India tour Nov. 14-30, 2017 The tour was a very nice balance between the frenetic urban pace of New Delhi, with its 16 million people, and more relaxed settings like Varanasi, the sacred city of the Hindus; and the bucolic wilderness of the Ranthambore national park. The Taj Mahal was, as I expected, magnificent (post-card India). But the images stamped in my mind are the unexpected ones --- the Bengal tiger stalking his prey, four crocodiles sunning themselves along the river bank, a huge male sambur deer rolling on his back taking a mud bath, late-night cremation ceremonies along the Ganges River in Varanasi, an Indian holy man with uncut hair and his face smeared with human ashes from the crematoriums, sending offerings of marigolds and lit candles into the River Ganges at night for the health and safety of our loved ones, visiting a laundry where clothes are cleaned by being stomped by people's feet in a big tub, a sacred cow lying on the tracks right in the middle of a train station in Agra. The hotels on the tour were first class; the food excellent. The traffic in India is like nothing we have ever experienced (even with a visit to China last year). So we would like to specially commend our excellent drivers Assif in Delhi, and Malik on the rest of the trip, who got us through hair-raising situations unscathed. The tour guides, Raj in Delhi, and particularly Sandeep on the remainder of the tour, were great. We felt very lucky to have someone as exceptionally erudite as Sandeep, working towards a PhD, as our guide. He is so knowledgeable and is able to bring Indian history and Hindu religion alive with his amusing stories of Mogul rulers, other invaders, and gods and deities. He is very patient and adept at answering standard tourist questions about subjects like sacred cows, the caste system, and why there are swastikas on the old temples. He has a good sense of humour, is warm and personable, relates to people well, and helped to build a rapport among our small group by taking group photos for us and having everyone exchange emails so we could keep in touch (including with him). Because of him, the trip felt like travelling with friends. We would certainly recommend this tour to our friends, and perhaps return to see other parts of India with your company.

Apologies for the delay in regard to this reply. It has been 3 weeks since we got back but the first one was an adjustment to time and travel. There are just not enough good words to describe the trip but it was definitely spectacular and above expectations. Exceptionally well organized and highly professional personnel were involved in the tour. India is just so remarkable as there is so much history. We crammed and read 3 books about the country in advance but there is so very much more to learn. To be able to travel there and have professional tour guides with that depth of knowledge was fortunate indeed. Can’t say enough about the calibre of Sandeep Singh regarding his professionalism, knowledge, organizational skills and overall ability! Hilal Lone did a good job for us during the Kashmir part of it! Besides the 2 guides, there were a lot of people to acknowledge in regard to the success of the trip. Unfortunately we won’t be able to name everyone. However, we will start with yourself Nazir. Being patient, personable, and responsive in terms of direction up front made for easier planning. Those who headed up organization at the other end, such as Rajeev Sharma, went beyond the call of duty to get their part of the operation right. If only for our jetlag the day after we arrived, he would have got us to a cricket game! Rafiq Mohamed did his part as well for the Kashmir leg of the trip. Last but not least, people such as the driver, Dalit Singh Walia, and his assistant Anand Mishra, made the journey what it was. The wondrous architecture we saw was at times almost surreal. They were so advanced in this regard so very long ago! Because some were so spectacular and precise, pictures do not quite do it justice, one has to simply see it! Also so impressed with the people of India. Massive population but they have found a way to make it work. Seemingly caring to each other and respectful and friendly towards tourists. Maybe the “hawkers” not so much. To a certain extent, one even adjusts to the heat. After time spent at the sites the air-conditioned vehicles helped in this regard. Small detail maybe, but cold bottled water always being available was quite important. The tour offered a good mix and variation of experiences. The trip into the forest was definitely special. Viewing the wildlife, especially the Bengal tiger, will always be a memorable lifetime experience. The quality of accommodation was very high. The variety and selection for meals offered up something that I expect everyone could be satisfied with, as we were. Never knew anything about Explore India before the trip. Now that we do and experienced it, we would certainly highly recommend your company and the tour! Cheers,