Intrepid Travel
 

Has anyone used Intrepid? We've never used a tour and have really never been interested in tour groups, but theirs sound pretty good and I think would be start for a first trip to India. Any thoughts?

They seem to be a reputable company, although I've never tried them or any tour company really.

My sister and I went on their Eastern Europe trip and were very pleased. It's kind of barebones compared to many tour companies, I think. You get LOTS of free time - basically they handle the logistics - transportation, hotels, often a brief overview of an area, a few dinner get-togethers (optional) - and the rest of the time you're on your own. Plus they mostly use local transportation rather than charter buses and they stay in moderate 2-3 star hotels. It's a younger crowd than many tour groups (at least ours was). Several single 20-somethings. And we liked the small size - our group totaled 12 with the leader. It was a lot of fun. I can strongly recommend them as long as you recognize up front that this isn't a luxury tour.

Actually, they did have a few planned activities - again optional. There was a bike ride one day. There was a tour of Dachau for everyone. So there were a few things planned together - the time wasn't ALL on your own, although it was almost always easy to opt out. We really liked how unstructured it was - yet the basics were taken care of.

Looking at their web site it seems that they offer several types of tours. Some unstructured as mentioned above and others which sound a lot more structured.

I really loved my Intrepid trip last year. I think the style was called Intrepid Original. We had a lot of planned but optional activities, and I found the hotels to be quite satisfactory. I also really liked using public transportation, which made me feel like I was getting a more realistic experience than an air conditioned tour bus. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about it.

I took a thirty day Intrepid trip in October of India.It was wonderful,and so much better than I could have expected!I'll be happy to answer any questions.

are the hotels on the intreprid origianl India trip pretty nice? anita