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Luxury Taj Holiday Tour
Tuesday, April 01, 2008 5:28 PM
RMathivanar@cochlear.com.au
Dear Anupama,
I hope you had a great Holi holiday.
Karin, Peter, Matty and I returned to Australia safely last week-end.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for organising an excellent tour for us in North India. We enjoyed the experience very much. India was all we expected and more. The history, culture, architecture, art and people were all wonderful.
Some aspect of life in India and the infrastructure does need improvements. We have high hopes that this will get sorted out in the next decade or two!
We are very impressed with the organisation and professionalism of Compass India Inc. We had your representative meet at every destination and very promptly.
Their friendliness and professionalism in general was exemplary. We also found the guides very professional and very knowledgeable.
Special comment on Ram our driver in Rajasthan. Ram is a great driver and took customer service to a new level. We weren't impressed with the Park Hotel charging us Rs. 95.00 for water bottles which cost Rs.12 outside. We are happy to pay some premium, however for something that is a necessarily, an 800% premium is a bit too much. Thus we started to buy water outside with Ram's help!!
Ajay at Jodpur was also very helpful and we spend our second night in a palace room at Balsamand Palace that was very "palatial". Jodpur ended up being one of my favourite places in this trip which had so many highlights. Umesh in Kajaraho also was great in customer service. Peter, Karin and I had a ayurvedic massage at Kajaraho.
My favourites:
Cities:
Jodpur
Jaipur
Architectural marvels
Taj Mahal
Baby Taj
Kajrahoe
Ranakpur Jain temple
Forts:
Mehranghe Fort
Palace:
Balsamand Palace (gardens were beautiful)
Umaid Bhavan (looked beautiful only saw the museum section!)
Hotels:
Trident Hilton (mentioned first because of the service and breakfast choice was great)
Balsamand Palace (ambience and heritage value was great breakfast was so so!)
Deogarh Palace (foe a small place the food was good. We had our one and only cappuccino here!
Bikanar Palace (quite nice! food service so so!)
Guides:
Varanasi - Indrajeet
Ashvini - Kajaraho
Vneet - Delhi
Ragunath - Jodpur
Sham - Jaipur (very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the religious tales)
All the guides you recommended were good - but these guys were exceptional.
In the trip my least favourite place was Pushkar - the temple was dirty and I did not feel the spirituality of the place as in some other temples. The quietness and "lack of " priests in some of the other temples actually let you feel the spirituality of these holy places. Pushkar was also the only place I could honestly say lacked the warmth of other places we had associated with in India.
We all had some form of a "Delhi Belly" during our trip. My husband was the first to go down after eating chicken in Mandawa. Peter and Karin had days when things were not quite normal but nothing too serious!! I escaped, until the last day when I just did not feel like having any curry meals.
I will be planning a Ayurvedic holiday with my father in Kerala as soon as I can fit the time and a South Indian Holiday in 2011 and will be consulting you on this. Next year is France and seeing family in England.
All in all a very lovely holiday. Thank you very much for organising this. I will recommend your company to my friends, colleagues and relatives. Feel free to keep in touch.
Kind Regards
Ranji
