india advice

[orangelotus]

just thinking about doing an organised small group tour of india.
we normally plan and arrange everything ourselves but i quite like the idea of going with a group and having no responsibility.
Has anyone done something like this?
what did you think?

Where are you planning to go ?

We went with Exoticca 2019. Rajasthan/Golden Triangle, half board, very good value, good guide with driver and assistant, small group. Mixture of hotels but all acceptable. Very glad we took the opportunity.

golden triangle and then a couple of nights in Goa 14 days in all
itinerary looks amazing but we've never done a group holiday .

oh i looked at exoticca and was very tempted but very mixed reviews.
i'll take another look if you were happy

It is a well trodden path and you will find that a lot of companies do small group tour. 14 days is a good amount of time to spend in that region. It depends on what the company offers.

You really do not need a small group tour if don't want to. It is fairly easy to arrange this on your own.
Look at hotels in Delhi - ask them to pick you up and they will also arrange for you to be taken to Agra on a day trip.

Depending on what time of the year you go, spend time in Rajasthan and you will love it.
Why don't you do Goa for another time.
Recommend our winter months as it gets very hot in summer

I went to the Golden Triangle with Exodus in 2018 and absolutely adored it. (It was the trip called "colours of Rajasthan" with an add-on for the Pushkar camel festival). I've been trying to go back to India for a while - in 2019 I booked a trip to Gujurat to take place in 2020, that was obviously cancelled and is now unavailable, but I'm off to the south of India later this year.

India is a big place - a bit like Europe is a big place! If you're travelling from one city to the next, you will spend a fair bit of time on the road. I've seen holidays advertised for 8-9 days - that is not enough time - we went for 2 weeks and the trip could easily have been stretced out for longer.

We stayed in mostly 3* hotels and tbh they weren't always great, but I would rather see some local flavour than stay in multinational chains.

I like travelling with small groups such as Exodus as you have a guide, you have company, it feels safe. Our guide was amazing and organised lots of things for us that weren't in the official itinerary, eg visiting the local cinema to see a newly released blockbuster - that was more like a pantomime with the audience shouting out, booing the baddies, cheering the goodies etc, great fun!

I don't think I'd feel safe travelling on my own in India. My daughter was there for 3 months as an independent traveller and she was OK, but she was travelling with her male partner, and she said would not have felt comfortable without male company. (I should add that I am also well used to organising my own trips and travelling alone in Europe, I'm no rookie traveller).

I found it all absolutely exhilirating and can't wait to go back.

I'd agree with a PP, don't try to combine Rajasthan and Goa in one holiday. There's more than enough to see and do in the North, and it's a fair distance between the two. It would be a bit like coming from India to visit England, then tagging a couple of days in Majorca onto the end of your holiday.

I used Selective Asia and they were brilliant

@mauvish - have travelled all over the South, you will live it. Where are you heading to?

Love it... so different from the North.

If you do the golden triangle don't hang around too long in Delhi. I wasn't impressed with the city. Also Agra is not much cop either other than the Taj Mahal. Jaipur however was brilliant. Other than that do Varanasi and Wishikesh. Oh and Goa obviously. I really enjoyed the country but the constant pestering of westerners for money in the streets was tiring. Always trying to sell you something.

thank you all for your much appreciated advice. i thiyill book it tomorrow.
the hotels look great so does the itinerary and we are usually the organisers of complex trips so i think we'll enjoy being told what to do!!
you've all been so positive as well about India and it will be a completely new ext for us !

@ProfessorLayton1 - flying into Kochi, east to Madurai, then back to Trivandrum, with plenty of stops in between! I've heard that the south is a lot more chilled than the north --

Wonderful, you will be passing through Western ghats. Munnar, tea plantation, Periyar tiger reserve and Madurai temple. Amazing local cuisine as well.

You really don’t need to do a group tour if you don’t want to. We’ve been to India twice and planned it ourselves - plenty of pretty well travelled routes that make it easy enough to plan it yourself. Then you’ll have full flexibility and choice over what you do.

I enjoyed Kerela - kovalum, Aleppy boat trip and kochi. Depends if you want to combine the north and the south or just stick to the north. You could fly in to Delhi and out of kochi and do internal flights to get from the north to the south

Maybe we were just lucky with Exoticca but we had a wonderful time prob helped by the fact we all got on so well. We started and ended in Delhi, Agra, Jodphur, Jaipur. Some hotels modern some old palaces. Do go for it - I would def do the north and a trip - I would not want the worry of negotiating the every day problems that would take away from the wonderful places. It is such a completely different way of life and some security was appreciated by us.

thankyou all so much , we have booked and am delighted. it's a combination of golden triangle, tiger safari( sightings seem unlikely!) and a few days in Goa.
you've all been so helpful thankyou think we are beginners for india
i will
report back on here when we return if anyone is interested

We did a tiger safari (two, actually) and saw no tigers, though we saw a pawprint! And we did see other animals and birds.

Four members of our group who had booked together had also booked a seperate smaller jeep for the safari, just for them, and they did see tigers! So it might be worth asking the travel co. if this is a possibility; a smaller vehicle, with fewer people onboard, might just give you the tiger-spotting edge!