We have just come back from a two week custom Indian tour with Akbran tours. We started from Delhi, visited Keoladeo National Park, with overnight at Bharatpur. On the way to Agra, we visited Fatehpur Sikri. In Agra, we visited all the usual sites plus experienced Taj Mahal at sunrise, sunset, and under full moonlight. From Agra we went to Ranthambore National Park. On the way saw the Abhaneri step well. After three tiger safaris we went to Jaipur, then Varanasi and Delhi.
We contacted 5 tour operators based on TA reviews, and narrowed down to 2 quickly based on the responses we received. We booked all our hotels ourselves, just needed a good quality Toyota Innova with an English speaking , skillful driver. We also needed guide service at Fattehpur Sikri and Agra. We wanted to experience Taj Mahal at night under the full moon. We wanted to do tiger safaris in zone 1-5 at Ranthambore National Park to improve our chances to see tigers. We decided to book with Akash since he agreed to obtain Taj moonlight tickets for us with a very small fee and he suggested us to contact our lodge at Ranthambore National Park to secure safari vehicle in zone 1-5 while all other tour companies just simply agree to book tiger safaris without guaranteeing any particular zone. When we had trouble to reach our lodge at Ranthambore National Park, Akash contacted the lodge directly for us. He did that to make sure we could get better chance to see tigers at the cost of his not making any profit on our safari booking.
From the minute we arrived at Delhi airport, he did what he promised: vehicle, driver, all were very good. Akash is also a very good guide. His English is excellent. He gave us just the right amount of information to make the sites come alive.
But what makes this company stand out is when things went wrong. First Air India cancelled our flights from Jaipur to Varanasi without offering us any alternatives. Akash stayed up till the early morning hours to book train tickets for us. Due to very bad pollution in those few days, the train was delayed more than 24 hours. During that period, he helped us to book a new hotel & make a new plan at last minute. We did not wait at the train station. We visited many attractions to fill the time gap of the delayed hours. When the train finally departed, he stayed up almost all night to contact our Varanasi hotel to arrange a taxi to pick us up from the train station and kept contact with us so we would not miss our station, since the train was further delayed, and there was no schedule to work with. He monitored the train’s progress on line for us. Varanasi is not the terminal station for that train and there are generally no station names on Indian train platforms either. You better have an operator like Akash to support you if you are not experienced riding Indian trains.
We are so glad that we chose Akbran tours. We stayed mostly at 5 star hotels, had a 24/7 support from Akash, had a very nice Vehicle, a very kind and easy to work with driver, saw all the things we planned and more. At the end we paid less than a group tour from Gate 1 travel or OAT. Not to mention there is no group tour offering such an itinerary. We were never taken shopping unless we requested. Even then we were free to leave those showrooms after just a few minutes if we didn’t find what we wanted.
We highly recommend this tour operator. We will use them again if we go back to India. We have traveled to 88 countries and used reputable operator like Kuoni for custom tours before. But we never had a tour operator back us up 24/7 with instant response.