Golden Triangle Tour - 4 Nights / 5 Days

I had high hopes for this tour because of the stellar rating and now I wonder how many less satisfied customers just didn't leave a review. I wish this site allows you to sort by star rating in both descending and ascending order so that you can access bad reviews just as easily. I really wish I had gone through all the bad reviews before the trip. The bottom line is I do NOT recommend this tour! If you pay attention to the itinerary unfortunately I didn't before the trip, you will see the so called 4-night trip is essentially 1.5 day trip. Day 1: no signt-seeing Day 2, 3 : sight-seeing in the morning, 4hr car rides in the afternoon Day 4: sight-seeing in the morning, no program in the afternoon Day 5: car ride to airport So essentially you tour for only 3 mornings, let alone the fact that there were a number of designated stops for pressured shopping in those 3 mornings Sales clerks in those stores can be very rude and aggressive. Now, if you are flying from North America, it takes about 18 hrs or more to travel to India each way let alone wait/check-in time at the Airport and layovers. It just doesn't make sense to go to a country so far away for as little program as this one. Secondly, just like designated stores, guides will take you to designated restaurants where they take commission and/or free food. Most of them are ok they're not that different from the Indian food you get in north America, my boyfriend did get food poison on the last restaurant in Jaipur. He ordered butter chicken and said to me the chicken tasted a bit weird during the meal. His stomach was upset the whole night. The next morning, he threw up and sweated profusely and stayed in the bathroom for 2 hours. Thirdly, the hotels are not 5-star. 4-star maybe. The first night in Delhi, the hotel room was quite dusty and the bedding doesn't look clean at all. Now, the real problem in addition to food poisoning: The driver is very unpleasant and he is the person that we had to spend the most time with during the tour because the driver is the same throughout the trip though you get different guide in each city. He communicates mostly by grumbling curt, abrupt commands: Tomorrow 8 O clock or Tips, tips!. Yes, he demanded tips instead of waiting for voluntary tipping. We initially planned to leave him 100 tip at the end of the trip and were sort of forced to tip him 20 daily when his attitude worsened and tone got hostile. We didnt feel comfortable reasoning with him because of how thoroughly we depend on him during the tour what if he decided to drop us off in the middle of a dirt road with no bus or car or even a sign of location in sight ? In the car rides, he would often abruptly interrupt our conversations, especially when I was speaking I guess because Im a woman. At one time, my boyfriend and I were discussing a podcast episode and I was interrupted three times before I could finish my point. A lot of times, he would complain about guides being smooth talkers and cheaters who take 40 commissions and would grumble something like guides good English and commissions me not good English, only tips. On the last day of the trip, the driver offered to show us the local market and drove us to a run-down building in a remote part of town and as soon as we got into the store, we realized there were over a dozen Indian male workers in the store who seemed to be waiting for our arrival and a very aggressive store clerk started to push textiles to us. We walked around the store hoping we could get out by buying something small. But the workers followed and surrounded us. Both of us felt very unsafe and afraid. In the end we had to buy something thats marked up at least 5 times. After we got out of the store, I asked the driver about the local market that we were supposed to go and he started to give excuses such as no parking we did park around the local market during the day for the museum and astronomical observatory ! Then he tried to take us to another store selling jewelry and we refused adamantly.

Excellent. Tour guides were wonderfully knowledgeable. Seamless. Wold recommend to all.

Hotels and guides qualities varied greatly. Chauffeur was very unprofessional and had to take a lot of breaks for smoking.

Overall the tour was great. We have tour guides in each city we visited and a very reliable driver, Hamesh who drove us in delhi, Agra and Jaippur. All the tour guides were very knowledgeable about all the interesting cities we visited. The ITC Hotel in Agra is really magnificent and is just 5-10 minutes away from Taj Mahal The ITC hotel is definitely a 5 star. Trident Hotel in Jaipur is also a 5 star hotel and equally clean and beautiful. However, Welcome Hotel in Dwarka located in Delhi is a run-down hotel that needs major renovation and we rate this hotel as 1.5-2 stars. The hotel in Delhi is the only negative part of this tour. Overall, the tour was well-planned with detailed itineraries in each city.

Our first trip to India and it was an Amazing tour... Excellent hotels... very good food.... Perfect itinerary.... great guides ... No worries they pick you up from airport and back.. They took care of all the details. Highly recommended... you will enjoy it