Souther Travels India Experience (Shimla-Kullu-Manali Trip) - Nightmare you can Experience

For this summer I thought of visiting Shimla-Kullu-Manali. When I searched on net I came across http://www.southerntravelsindia.com/. I selected Volvo with Food option (7 days) package. I was very impressed after going through the site as they published they got some tourism awards continuously for 3 times. I was under impression I reached right guy for my holiday trip. All my expectations got ruined out with in 2 days of my tour. I will let Southern Travels India management analyze and decide what went wrong.

Here are my comments to them
Details of my Travel
Travels Name : Souther Travels India Pvt Ltd.
Package: Shimla - Kullu - Manali ( 7 Days)
Guide Name: Parveen
Helper Name: Raju
Driver Name: Raju Bhai.
My Comments

• Only words I can think about my Travel experience is : Nightmare, cheating, frauding, misguiding
• Guide (Parveen) by default assumes that customers are Scape Goats for him. He can misuse them as many times as he can. This guy will give you lots of information about day activity where there is profit for him. Entire people in bus concluded that he will get commission for every activity that tourist performs. This guy is real culprit, as he is representing Souther Travels obvious that I lost my confidence in Southern Travels.
• Helper (Raju), such a rude and arragont behaviour which we cannt bare more than a day. If you ask for any information, he only aggresively and arragontly questions you back.
• Food: The worst food I ever had in my life time. They made me scared to eat anything. I stopped eating rice from 4th day itself, and started surviving with 1 or 2 roti's. I might have felt very happy if they didn't included food in package.

As an end result I am wont approach or suggest Southern Travels again for any kind of tour / travel pacakge.

Here goes details:

Day 1: Started from Delhi to Shima.

Lunch: This is the most worst part of the trip, and it repeated on Day 7.

Dinner: Reached Shimla, they said it's their base kitchen and they are having staff for cooking. No change in their behaviour, rice is not even cooked properly. Dal (Pappu) without tamota's.

Hotel (2 Days stay Day 1&2): This is good, though there were minor issues like heater and power plug points its ok.

Guide: Anounces insists to give tip to boys at hotel.
Day 2: Kufri Site Seeing.
Breakfast: Idly/Dosa, Vada
Lunch: Vada which was left out in breakfast, they prepared a curry by naming "Vada Curry". As usually, rice was not cooked, curries were very bad.
Dinner: Same continued.
Guide (Parveen): Here started work of Parveen. Not sure whether Management knows this or not.

• Horse riding, charged (Rs.380/-) and he forced everyone to buy this. I am sure there is a commission for this.
• Reached Mountaing kind of place.
• He forces to take a photograph by wearing local dress. Photograph can be take with our cameras but he mandates saying we should take photo from local photographer. Deal is Dress rent Rs.20/- and each photo copy Rs.40/-. And this photographer minimum takes 6 to 12 photographs of each person. Even though I was saying I need only 3 or 4 they least bothered about my opinion. We will get physical copies of Photos on next day at hotel where we stayed.

Day 3: Starting from Shimla to Manali

Breakfast: Not Good.

Lunch : Stopped at one of the Daba on the way, I dont have words to talk about this lunch. Having good rice and dall is a dream from now. Here even roti is worst.

Dinner: At Manali, bit better compared with previous 2 days.

Guide(Parveen): Before starting from Shimla, Photographer came with hard copies of Photos and started shouting each copy Rs.60/- and to our surprise Parveen started supporting that. As 20 people in bus rejected to take photographs that guy came down to Rs.40/- after lot of high drama. Same kind of photographs can be taken in Shimla with Rs:30/- to Rs:40/- without dress rent. I am 100% sure Guide(Parveen) is having his share.

Before reaching Manali, we stopped some where near Kullu. Parveen said he is going to show place where Shawls and woolen things are made, and advertized saying we will get good quality there, and we dont get this much cost effective and quality goods in Manali. Is this part of Tour (Does management know this portion) ? Blindly we did shopping there, after completion of shopping of bus members he took his share and started from there to Manali.

We checked price of articles that we purched near Kullu and Manali, We paid much higher rates in Kullu.

Day 4: Manali Site seeing.

Hotel (Same for Day 5 also): Seems like old one, but not upto mark as we expected.

Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner: Is acceptable and atleast able to eat, but not upto normal meal that we take in any small south indian restaurant.

Guide (Parveen): He said they arranged a disco, cost is Rs:200/- per person. I was not aware of this activity, does management know about this (not sure)?

Day 5: Rohtang Pass
Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner: Is acceptable and atleast able to eat, but not upto normal meal that we take in any small south indian restaurant.

Guide (Parveen): This is golden day for him, we supposed to ware a dress which helps us to play in ice. Dress cost is Rs:50/- in normal shops, he stopped at a shop and we paid Rs:200/- for person and Rs:150/- for child. Many of bus members argued with him, but no use. He already had a tie-up with this shop it seems.

We never got any information about this place. Our vehicles stopped much prior to Rohtang Pass where all sports activities are there like Ice Scootering and others. We were seeing ice road side and he said this is how its going to be though we climbed we meters ahead. We stopped there. Few members in our bus we upto the mountain on horse and they had very good time. We missed very important part of our tour here, only becuase of misguiding of Parveen.

Day 6: Moving To Chandigarh

Breakfast : Is acceptable and atleast able to eat.

Lunch: Worst I ever had, same as Day 1 and Day 7

Hotel: Is good in Chandigarh, much better than Shimla and Manali hotels.

Guide (Parveen): We supposed to do river rafting on this day. As entire bus people got vexed with Parveen cheating game, nobody was accepting the price that river rafting guy was saying (Rs:450/- for 7 KM, but its ending at 1 to 1.5 KM). River rafting guy announced saying Rs:450/- is speically for Souther Travels actual price is Rs:700/- He came down upto Rs:400/-. We asked for Rs:350/-, as deal was not set we moved ahead and stopped at a temple. Other river rafting guy came to us and said he can arrange for Rs:350/-, we agreed. As Parveen dont have any commission in this, he never accepted for this and his reason was entire bus can't wait because of 6 or 8 people who are interested in doing river rafting. I personally went and asked other people in bus; is it ok for them to stay for 30 mins as we go for river rafting. As Parveen dont want this happen, he declined and moved bus to Chandigarh.

Because of Parveen We missed 2 important things in our tour.

• RohtanPass Snow Games (Misguiding).
• Riverrafting.

Day 7: Chadigarh Site seeing and moving to Delhi

Breakfast: OK

Lunch: Worst as this is same place where we had our Day 1 Lunch

Guide (Parveen): Parveen started collecting feedback, I given similar feedback what I have written here. I am 100% sure my feedback was not reached to Delhi office. Parveen forcibly asking tourists to give 5(Very Good) rating. As he is sitting next to them and insisting few given the same feed back I believe.

Final Words:

For me Guide (Parveen) who represented Southern Travels misguided and cheated me. If Souther Travels management is seeing this and want to get my feedback I am happy to give me sincere feedback to them. Here is my email: jithendrarenati@gmail.com

Souther Travel Customer ==> Scape Goat for Guide (Parveen)

Better not to eat food provided by them

Staff (Guide and Helper) are worst people that you ever going to deal with. I dont have any complaints with Driver.

Where is Kullu site seeing, probably they need to remove "KULLU" word from tour title. We never visited Kullu.

Please leave your comments.