India Delight Tours - New Delhi

We booked the three-day Golden Triangle tour with three-star hotels and everything included except lunch and tips. We started out in Delhi before going to Jaipur, Agra, and Fatehpur Sikri (order was reversed to avoid coming to Taj Mahal on a Friday). Our guides in Delhi, Agra, and Fatehpur Sikri (Singh, Ali, and Ali) were excellent. They were friendly and knowledgeable and really helped us enjoy our trip. We were also very happy with our driver, Raj, who took excellent care of us for three days. We warmly recommend all of them if you want to have a great Golden Triangle experience. We really liked the tour program as well and had a wonderful time at all the places we got to see. However, there were some major issues with the organization of the tour that prevented us from enjoying our trip as much as we had hoped. First, we did not get to see several sights that were supposed to be included in our program. Specifically, we did not get to see the Red Fort in Delhi nor the City Palace in Jaipur, and there was no elephant ride. We were not asked or informed about this. We were also told that we would see Taj Mahal at sunrise, but the sun had already risen by the time we were picked up at our hotel. Second, we were taken to many shops where we ended up spending a lot of time that we would rather have spent elsewhere. These were not listed in the program and were disguised as demonstrations of local crafts. While we did appreciate the opportunity to buy local products in some of these shops, we were not at all happy about the amount of time spent on this and, again, we were not asked or informed beforehand. Finally, the company had apparently given wrong information about our tour to two of our guides. Because of this, we had to pay admission to all sights in Jaipur ourselves (even though this was supposed to be included) and this was what caused us to miss the City Palace and elephant ride in Jaipur. We were able to negotiate a reduction of the total price, although not as much as we had excepted and with quite a bit of difficulty. Had it not been for these issues, we would have given our tour a five-star rating based on our guides, driver, and the sights that we did get to see.