Commendations

Rogers,rogers-family@xtra.co.nz

Greetings Varsha,

Well we have settled back home now after our wonderful journey through India with Compass. I would just like to thank you for the excellent organisation of the trip. Everything went very well and in most places exceeded our expectations.

Our driver in northern India, Vikram was absolutely wonderful. He looked after us incredibly well and we are very grateful to him. He was always prepared to do an extra bit for us. This was especially appreciated on Christmas day when he turned up with flowers for us all. He always drove safely and kept the car clean. We are very grateful to him for making that part of the trip so smooth. We would definitely recommend him to people.

Our guides were also great. We also appreciated the Compass representatives who met us at every stop.They were unfailingly courteous and helpful. We really appreciated their flexibility such as when one of the children was not well or we were very tired and needed to adjust our timetable.

Our trip down south was also great. Our driver there was fine (not quite as good as Vikram) but always courteous and helpful. The process was not quite as smooth when we did not have Compass agents but we were still extremely pleased.

We loved the majority of places we stayed at particularly Mandawa(Mandawa Haveli),Chennai(Marina Towers), Bikaner(Bhawar Niwas) Jaislamer(Jaisal Castle) Jodpur(Pal Haveli)and Kumarkom(Kovilum Lakeside).
 
Our only disappointments were Tourist Deluxe in Delhi. our concern here was the location made it difficult to walk very far and feel safe. Also we found this hotel a bit overwhelming as our first stop and would probably have appreciated something a bit easier to start with. Our other disappointment was Oriental Towers (Tanjore) which was quite dirty.

Occasionally our itinerary was a bit too busy in Rajasthan and it was difficult to do tours after a long days driving however these are only minor issues. Overall we were extremely happy and would recommend your company to anyone. If you wish us to be a referee for your company please let us know.

Thank you again and best wishes to all at Compass who made our trip so wonderful.

Maureen Paul Kate Sam and Maggie Rogers

susanedge@actrix.co.nz

Hi Varsha

it's taken us a few days to recover from our long journey home ( 48 hours) but now it is time to write and thank you for all the work you did to make our month in India run so smoothly. Jim and I had a wonderful time - and not for a moment were we unhappy with any of the decisions you had made for us.

We found our accommodations very good - some really excellent ,and worthy of mention for that is Jas Vilas in Agra  - a lovely place to stay. Everywhere else was as we had hoped, and we enjoyed the heritage places too.

It was great to be greeted by a Compass representative wherever we went, and to know that we could call on them if necessary .  The guides were all very intelligent young men ( no women ? ) and increased our knowledge of each area, and it's history.

Our drivers were excellent.  Mahesh, Lahar in Rajasthan,  and Denisen in Kerala were all very courteous, punctual,  and looked after us well.  Best of all they were all safe drivers, and in all that chaotic traffic for all those miles of driving, I never saw one of them take an unnecessary risk and we felt safe with them.   Please pass on our gratitude to each of them.

And many thanks to you and your team too. We have had an experience to remember for the rest of our lives, and you and Compass Tours made it as easy for us as it could possibly be. Thanks again Varsha, for your efforts on our behalf - it truly was a fascinating tour, and we will strongly recommend you to anyone coming your way.

Kind regards,

Susan and James Edge.

Franz Mairinger,franz.mairinger@chello.at

Dear Sir,

Now we are nearly one week at home and I would like to say: Thank you very much for organising our tour through Rajasthan.

We liked the Heritage Hotels you have chosen for us. Sometimes they were just great, sometimes there was not the expected level (Pushkar and Mount Abu). Deogarh is for elder people exhausting, because to go to the restaurant we had to climb 153 steps!

Our driver Kuldeep and his help Balseet were excellent, very cautious and no minute we were afraid of his driving, even there was much traffic and two-way traffic.

Mr. Surinder Malik was a good guide and took care of us. In every situation, he helped us. whether we need in restaurants to chose menus or buying medicaments.

We will not forget our guides we had in Fathepur Sikri, Jaipur, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. They all know the history of their monuments and we learnt many things.

We can warmly recommend all persons, who “took care of us” and who gave us also the feeling being a welcomed guest.

Of course we will recommend you and so I’m sure that some friends of us will also organise their India tour with your Travel Agency.

Thank you Mr. Durjay Sen Gupta and thank you Mr. Pury.

With our best regards and good memories of Rajasthan

Yours

Franz, Rita, Severin and Teresa Mairinger

Kaspar ,kaspar@kosmomusic.com

Hi Varsha,

We are back in Germany and I wanted to thank you for the great organisation!

Special thanks to Balbir, our excellent driver and to Vicram, who brought our mobile phone to the airport before we left! That was very nice.

Our tour guide in Agra was very nice and well informed, too. Unfortunately I forgot his name.

I hope you did not misunderstand my objection regarding the missing tour guide in delhi. For us this trip was not cheap and so we just wanted to

mention it, because we were a bit disappointed. Nonetheless it was a great trip and we will recommend your travel agency to all our friends (I think

Tom Petsch and Ati Leenen allready booked a flight with you in India) and we will certainly come back to your beautiful country.

I hope we have the chance to travel to india again soon as we both enjoyed it a lot.

Thanks again and best regards from munich.

 
Kaspar

VIRSAN1@terra.es

Virginia & Daniel,

Spain Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2006 4:23 PM

Subject: Greetings from Spain Dear Durjay, It´s been quite a long time since our trip to India finished, and we owe you some feedback. We´ve been prety busy until the moment since just before our trip started, we had moved to a new house. Now life is becoming normal. I hope you all are fine, and we expect no relatives or friends of yours have been affected by the bombs in Mumbai. We were shocked when we heard the news. Our mind was full of thoughts and feelings similar to the ones we had here in Spain with the 11M attacks at Atocha train station. Coming back to the trip. We must say we had a wonderful time in India, and you and your team made a great work. Everything run accordingly and we made the most of our stay. Something I considered highly important, was the driver, and I have only good words for Shingara. He was absolutely perfect, always in a good mood, willing to go wherever we planned different from the scheduled tour. He contributed a lot to having a great tour. With regards to the guides, I must say they were all good, but there was one whom we considered exceptional. The guy who guided us in Jodhpur. Absolutely fabulous!!! I guess he is one of those guides you can follow during a whole trip. Very nice person and very professional. When we have friends coming to India, or if we come back again, we will ask you for this guy, for sure. We were a little bit disappointed with the guy who toured us in Udaipur. He took us to a very expensive miniature shop and we decided not to buy anything. That same day later in the afternoon, he followed us to see where we were buying things, and the day after during the trip he asked us for an explanation. We didn´t expect that treatment. We did not pay much attention to that but I guess you´ll need to be careful, because it was an uncomfortable situation for us and I guess there was no need for it. From the point of view of the tour I must say he did a very good job, very interesting explanations and very good spoken Spanish. Our trip to Agra was a little bit stressful, I know this is in part my fault, because I try to concentrate as many things as possible in a trip. I guess it would have been better if we had gone to Agra by train instead of by car. It took us a very long time and left us with not much time to visit monuments. We had to decide which visits to skip, and that´s hard when you´ve come from so far away to visit a country. Maybe you can think of this for some other trips of people. There was a hotel we did not like at all. The one in Jaisalmer. It was abandoned and the people at the front desk were not very helpful or nice (the staff was very good, as everywhere in India). Just in case someone else asks you for it. I guess these are the only things I would highlight, for the rest, the trip was excellent and we keep on looking the pictures we took once and again. Absolutely wonderful, Durjay! Great work you and your people did. We loved everything we saw, we loved the people, the chaos, the traffic, everything. You have a wonderful and huge country and the best thing is that you are making it accessible to foreigners like us at all its best. It was great to see your people at the airports, at the hotels, never feeling alone or insecure. I know a colleague from Daniel has contacted you in order to organise his trip to Calcutta. We´ve been publicising your company all over because we had a great experience, and we would like our friends to share that too. Next time we visit India we would like to go to the South - Kerala and the backwaters. We have no dates but I´m sure I will contact you again! Feel free to provide our e-mail address to give feedback to other travellers from Spain. We will be glad to share our wonderful experience with other people so that they take Compass to plan their tour. Thanks for everything once again!

Our warmest regards

Virginia & Daniel

alain.boutigny@enseigne-et-sites.com

Hi Mr. Durjay

! Now, we're back from India. We've had a very nice trip and I thank  you very much for all the amenities you've planed for us. Only two little things I have to tell you : - Your correspondent in Varanasi is not clear (but the driver is  top !). For example, hi tells me to give to the porter in Varanasi train station, 100 INR; but the price is only 20 ! So, I ask me where the 80 are now ! - The driver in Kolkata does'nt speak english - not at all. He was just terrified to be alone with us and have to speak English.  Luckily, your correspondent was really top!  Don't worry for both. But it's better you know it ! And I thank you again.

Very Kindly, Alain Boutigny

Gaëlle,ulvoas@singnet.com.sg

Dear Varsha,
 
I take a few minutes to give you our feedback on our trip to India.

 Overall we are very satisfied with Compass's work. Our appreciation of hotel, drivers and guides choices is good (except for French speaking guide in Jaipur who was much less professional than the others and really made us feel like "tourists" + lack of friendliness of reception staff and pressure for tips from personnel at Clark's Agra and Khajuraho). The guides in Jodhpur and Agra were outstanding.

The follow-up by the diverse Compass agents was very good.

Our only disappointments with Compass were regarding:

- programming TAJ MAHAL on a Friday!
- underestimating the traffic in Delhi which had us miss our train on day 2 of the tour.
 
You can contact us by mail for further information if you wish.

Best regards,
 
Gaëlle

susanna_esplund@hotmail.com

Hi Shweta!

Now I'm home in old cold Sweden again with nothing but sweet memories of India.

I really want to thank you for everything; you have done a terrific job with our trip! We are so great-ful and happy with the service that you and COMPASS INDIA have given us. Everything has gone just smoothly and everyone has been so sweet to us. We just had a few thoughts as you might have seen in our feedback, but all in all we are SO VERY HAPPY with our trip.

We will definitely use your company next time we are going to India (we already want to go back) and furthermore recommend COMPASS INDIA to everybody we know.

Once again: THANK YOU!

Love from

Susanna Esplund

Senahadi W,wirantana@hotmail.com

Hello Shweta,

How are you?

I would like to give my feedback about the trip to India.

First of all, I just realized that you are a lady …… sorry about this.

This happened when we had chat during our journey and one of them just mentioned that you just got married too, Congratulation.

Now about the trip:

Started from Delhi’s airport until Bhairahawa’s airport in Nepal, the trip was really smooth and some parts were exciting too.

How lucky I am to get such very good driver like Govind from Varanasi all the way to Nepal.

I would give him an excellent score from the way he drove the car, the way he talked to everybody and the way he served us for almost 9 days passed thousands kilometers on both good and bad road.
 
If one day I have chance to visit India for Buddhist pilgrimage again, I will choose him as my driver for sure.

Also special thanks to Misra (Guide at BodhGaya) for his knowledge about Buddhist history and important places.

I attached our picture with Govind at Nirvana hotel Lumbini before left for Kathmandu.

Last but not least, I would like to thank to you for everything and good luck.

Regards,

Senahadi

Gilles-Antoine Philippin ,g.philippin@bluewin.ch

Hello Varsha,

How are you?? and your future husband?

Sorry for the big delay, but time pass to quikly....

Here I join some pictures of our wonderful trip.

If you want more tell me (we had about 1300 pictures....we are crazy :-))

Some friend are interested to visit you, but rather in 2007 like us...

We would like to visit the south (Kerala and Karnataka) in 2007! When is it the best time to visit this part of India (May is it to late because of the rain season)??

I hope you 'll be able to organize our trip!

Some of our postcard (posted to the reception desk of our hotel, Howard Park Plaza in Agra) are never arrived.... All the other posted in our hotel were arrived quikly. Did you already have that kind of problem with this hotel? Fortunately we sent the most part of our post cards before....
 
All of us wish you a nice end of year, and a new year 2006 full of beautiful moments.

Gilles

Esplund

Gilles-Antoine Philippin ,g.philippin@bluewin.ch

Dear Varsha

PS: I'll send you some pictures soon.

PS1: I'll speak about you on an important web French forum, I hope some people will contact you!

PS2: Don't hesitate to contact us if you come in Europe. I give you again our adress and phone numbers.

Geneva (we live there) is in the center of Europe and we have low cost flight company or fast train to most of the European Cities (Paris, Rome, Madrid, Barcelona,...) and Switzerland is beautiful too.....

Gilles-Antoine Philippin & Géraldine Dussex

Ch. des Vignes 18

CH - 1213 Petit-Lancy

Phone: +41 22 301 98 52
Mobile: +41 79 429 06 32

burcu ardali,burcuardali@yahoo.com

Dear Varsha,

We just wanted to let you know what a wonderful time we had in India. It was very difficult to come back and start working again :) And we have already started spreading the news about Compass. People are starting to get in line and we can't wait to plan our next trip to India. We had a great driver and guides. Please give our best to everyone who worked so hard to make this a memorable trip for us. Now you have two more friends from Turkey and hopefully that number will keep increasing as years go by. See you soon.  

Sincerely,

Burcu & Omer

Tim Lacey,c_sgroup@emirates.net.ae

Dear Varsha,
 
Thanks for arranging the tour – everything went well and we had a most enjoyable time ! Could you please e-mail me an official receipt – I need this to complete my expenses.

Many Thanks indeed!

Best Regards,

Tim Lacey

Naidoo,mo@worldonline.co.za

Dear Varsha
 
Apologise for not emailing you earlier.

The accomodation,sightseeing and hospitality were excellent.

Every city we visited was unique and interesting. Our favourites were Jaipur, Udaipur, Bangalore, Mysore, Alleppey and Goa.

Your representatives in every city were helpful and extremely courteous especially : Joe Ferreira ( Garha tours - Mumbai), Vikram (Delhi), Bivil (Cochin).

We  enjoyed sightseeing with all our tour guides especially: Mr Dharmalingam (Chennai), Mrs Varsha (Mumbai), Mr Polly (Mumbai), Mr Shalendra (Delhi).

They provided us with the knowledge and historical backgrounds to the numerous places we visited.

All your drivers were outstanding and a special mention to the following: Arun (Bangalore), Vincent  (Chennai), and Rippin Kumar  (Delhi,  Agra and Jaipur).

If possible please convey our thanks to the above.

Varsha, A Big Thank You for arranging our beautiful holiday in India (Jan 2006). You patience and understanding in compiling and organising a tailormade tour is appreciated. Your dedication is highly commendable and we will not hesistate to travel with Compass again.

Thanks to you, we had a superb time and the memories will linger on forever.

Our Compliments and best wishes to you (Varsha) and the Compass team.

From

Mona, Ruben and Reshania NaidooDurban, Kwa Zulu Natal

Magda,magdaguzi@gmail.com

Hi Varsha,

I would like to thank you and the Compass team for the very enjoyable trip to India we had in Feb/07. Except for the "guide" in Delhi, everything else was organized very professionally and my husband and me enjoyed very much the experience. The car, the driver (very nice person), the hotels, the flights - everything went smoothly with the help of the agents. The local guides were good, not counting the Delhi one which was not a guide, so I guess it was a one time flop.

Regards,

Magda

info@onetime.be

Hello Durjay:

Few words to give you a congratulation for your work and this of your team during booking and our tour in India.

We have apprecied - now and later - your cook book.

I hope we have the chance in the future to go back in your beautiful country and work again with you.

thanks again!

philippe duquaine / wavre