Need Help with Trip to India
 

We are planning our first trip to India 2 adults 3 kids, 17, 13 & 6yrs old... would like to go Dec 24-Jan 3. Are there any group tours you can recommend? or a private guide that can help us? Is 6yr old girl too young for India??

HI,
Pleace be in your life.
It is better for you to make private tour just with your family with a individual car and driver just for you.
With group tours you will just kill your time, often it is too slow.
Many of my clients they travel in India and Nepal even more younger childrens then yours and they never face any problem.
You best route can be as follows:-
Delhi
Jaipur
Agra
Varanasi
Kathmandu
Delhi
Thanks.
Have a good trip.
Raju India

You can include Kerala in your itinerary and select homestays for accomodation. Doing a self organised tour is better

There are numerous posts about great itineraries in India on this site. Just put "India" in the search field.

Here's the travel agent I used in India: Arvind at Castle & King. He was great so feel free to ask him for his advice. He will make the plan totally individualized for you. Then you can decide if the price is right. Arvind's email: [email protected] or [email protected]

Good luck.

v_sapi,

Here's a second recommendation for Arvind at Castle and King.

My husband and I were in India for 2 weeks in March, and he arranged an incredible trip for us. We had a car and driver the whole time, and different guides in each city or location. The trip was flawless, and really was tailored to what we wanted to do and see. We went in/out of Delhi, saw the Taj, and spent the majority of time in Rajasthan.

Prior to going, we let Arvind know things like our ages, our activity level, our likes/dislike, the grade of hotel we wanted, how much driving we'd like to do on the driving days, what kinds of things we like to see, and to have guides that emphasized history, and some of the cities we were interested in. He really came through in every way. The hotels especially, exceeded our expectations. He also had us go to places that we never would have found on our own no matter how much research we did.

Prior to going to India, we contacted 2 other agencies, and Arvind was by far the most responsive and professional.

We're thinking of going to India again (doing a very Northern route this time), and I would just let Arvid know and have him plan the whole itinerary.

I hope that doesn't sound like a hopeless advertisement, but I really think his care was special.

By the way, he could probably think of some interesting ways to accommodate the kids in creative ways.

I could give you hotel and location recommendations, but don't know what your interests are.

Have a great time!!

LisaG

thanks everyone! I will contact Arvid as per your high reccomendations...

We spent 3 weeks with our own car and driver. I agree with the posted cities, but stretch out your time if you can. Jasilmar, and Amritsar were also on our list but they are out of the way for you. I'm not sure about 6 years old. You must be religious about brushing with bottled water,etc. If that one gets sick it could be a problem.

Add me to the list of happy travellers with Arvind @ Castle & King. You can click on my name for our trip report.

Lisa G, would love to hear details about your trip.

This is in response to your question posted on my trip report. Yes, i think your 6 year old could do a trip similar to ours but with some minor adjustments. From Delhi i would not do Taj Mahal as a one day tour. I would stay in Agra and then go on from there. Your child will go crazy in the car for that long and the drive between Delhi and Agra is not rivetting enough to keep him (her?) interested for that long.
We chose to fly from Bangalore to Delhi to Kathmandu to Kolkata to Bangalore simply to save time and make the most of our 2 weeks. One train ride of even 2 hours would have been an experience but my son had already "been there, done that" so we flew instead.
Like most countries, there is SO much to see that you have to narrow down your choices and resign yourself to covering other stuff on your next visit.
We kept our evenings free for a leisurely dinner and to wind down from the day. If you've never been in a similar culture it can be emotionally tiring (and your kids will thank you!).
Hiring a driver is the way to go! DO NOT THINK ABOUT DRIVING YOURSELF! It is death wish, and you'll miss seeing life out your window.
The posts above suggest a travel agent...follow that advice and see what you get. If they arrange a vehicle for you ensure that it's large enough for your family, including bags.
You'll have a great experience!
Oh, and take earplugs for sleeping. You may find the dogs/car horns to be bothersome.
Enjoy!
Mr Fun

Your time is only 10 days. With a 6 year old, you may need to cut back on how many cities you visit in such a short time.
Since this is your first trip, consider the Delhi, Agra, Jaipur itinerary. Don't make it a marathon trip with a young traveller. Delhi alone can use 3-4 days. If you have a good first trip, you can plan a second one and see other places.

Check ahead when planning your itinerary for things being closed - ie the Taj Mahal is closed Fridays.

CFW,

OK, you have sufficiently guilted me into doing a mini-mine trip report. And you've found out my extreme laziness!!

I'll do a quickie here:

First of all, I did not in any way want to go to India! And I came away ready to go again at a moment's notice. That's a big turnaround for me! My husband was the one who was really wanting to go, and is now "full" of India...so I may have to cajole him next time!

As stated above, we used Arvind to help plan our itinerary and to provide a car and driver. He also booked in-country train and air, and the hotels. We let him know what we were interested in, and he took it from there. We also indicated about the max. we'd like to drive by car each day and didn't want back-to-back long driving days.

Here's the list of cities in order of going there:

Delhi
Agra
Jaipur
Ranthambore Park for tigers
Deogarh
Jodphur
Udaipur
Delhi

Generally days were spent either enroute between these locations, or with a guide in each of those cities. Excellent guides everywhere. Our driver was really wonderful, and we were sad to leave him when we went by train!

Highlights (random order)of our trip were:

1) seeing tigers in Ranthambore Park. And the rest of the park as well. A real safari.
2) staying at the Sher Bagh while at Ranthambore. Incredible tented accomodations that were out of this world.
3) Udaipur. Staying at the Fateh Prakash Heritage Hotel. What a wonderful experience to be on the lake, see the migratory birds, romantic beyond-belief. Food at this hotel was the best of the trip.
4) Deogarh. Staying at the Deogarh Mahal hotel was a wonderful treat and felt we were in the middle of nowhere. The town was tiny and a real treat for walking around and seeing the real India on a much teenier scale than the "firehose" of the rest of India.
5)Jodphur. Going out to the villages and seeing people living and farming. What a great day that was. I thought it would be very touristy and was not looking forward to it, and it turned out to be one of the best days of my life (yes, life). Herds of camels, wonderful farms, great people.
6)The Imperial Hotel in Delhi. Spent 2 days there at the end of the trip. What a wonderful treat.
7) The drive from Delhi to Agra. Now there's a "firehose" of humanity, animals, chaos, and frenzy. You're definitely not in Kansas anymore!

That's it in a nutshell. Hope that suffices, CFW!

Oh, and if I went again, I'd love to do the very Northern part of the country.

LisaG

Thanks, LisaG. We visited most of the same places but did not get to Ranthambore. I would love to go back and have more time to visit a game park and also savor some of the places we really liked, such as Udaipur. Also would love to visit Kerala. If you go to the northern part of the country, where will you go?

Lisa G: 'seeing the real India on a much teenier scale than the "firehose" of the rest of India.'

What a great descriptive word - 'firehose' - it's a perfect way to sum up the experience of India.

Thanks CFW and dogster!

As to where I would want to go in the North, I would rely on Arvind's recommendations. I'd give him some criteria about what we'd want to see and let him go from there. I'm very interested in remote locations with great accommodations (like maybe Wildflower Hall). We also really like mountainous terrain.

What I learned after this first trip is that a knowledgeable person in the travel business knows places that I couldn't even find in my own research. Our stay in Deogarh showed us that.

I hope that answers (although vaguely) where I'd like to go next. That said, I'd also ask Arvind "if I had no other constraints and we had 2 weeks, what would you recommend". That would likely give me some provocative ideas as well.

Maybe I'm getting to the point that I'm willing to relinquish some of my compulsive researching and planning and maps with little stickers on them! Our last 2 trips we've used a car/driver/guide in each city model and we've had a blast! Those locations were Morocco and India, and maybe more amenable to specific local input. Other places in the world are easier to personally navigate for me, like Europe, Japan, China, Hong Kong, etc.

LisaG

Lisa,
Would you mind giving an estimate of the trip (other than international flights)?

I'm trying to come up with a possible 2-week trip around March 2009, and would really love to get an idea of costs. How many internal flights did you take between cities?

When I get a better idea if this is possible, I will definitely be in contact with Arvind at C&K.

Many thanks,
Paule