Dear Arun,
Kudos to Third Eye Travel for a trip well organized and coordinated! My friend Lynn who has traveled extensively says that is the way trips should go, but he and I also know that there are any number of things that can go wrong. I was amazed that you were able to deal with four different travel agencies and yet everything, from our view, seemed to happen seamlessly.
The trip I refer to is our trip through Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Darjeeling, India, and Sikkim. All guides and drivers were excellent even though some didn’t have the experience that others had. In Tibet guides were Nyima (Nyima’s grandmother died the morning we were leaving Lhasa, so he dropped out and was replaced by Penpa) and Penpa Tsering. Our driver for all of Tibet was Goji.
Lynn and I were pleased that our guides and driver for Tibet were Tibetan. Penpa handed us off to Kripa, our Nepalese guide, at Kodai and our driver then was Sanu. After flying into Paro, Bhutan we were met by Ram Subba, our guide, and Phub Tshring, our driver. They worked well together as our trip was not their first working together, nor their last. At Phuntsholing, they passed us on to Mrigendra “Mike” Rawat, our guide for Darjeeling, India and Sikkim, and Rajesh Chetri, our driver. The next morning we got Tshring Tamang as our driver since Rajesh was having car trouble. Tshring remained with us for the rest the trip through this area. After traveling the roads in that region of the world, our hats are off to these drivers for their excellent driving in conditions that we consider to be difficult, at best. I keep telling people here that they have no idea what the roads in that part of the world are like, and that there is little likelihood that anything will change because of the topography. Landslides are almost a given and thus roads will continue to be bad.
I’ve named our guides and drivers so that you know who they are. We surely didn’t expect, nor should anyone expect, you to know who may be guiding or driving. We did meet the person in charge for each agency at some point in our travels. That person, for Yuksom Tours & Treks, was a guide for two people who followed us through that portion of our trip so we talked with him on more than one occasion. I thought that was a nice touch that they all wanted to meet the people they were providing a service to. Guides and drivers were very knowledgeable, helpful, and considerate.
What can the companies do to make their service better? Lynn and I agree that it should be left to the companies to make that kind of a decision. We may have thought certain things could be better but someone else might think these things are ok. People, no matter where they live, always try to make comparisons to how things are at home. Lynn and I were in education, so a visit to a school in each of the different areas would have been interesting. However, as teachers we also know that could be disruptive to the learning process. So maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea. Perhaps the best way to solicit input from future customers might be to ask them what they want to see, if anything particular, after they review your itinerary. But otherwise, the companies know what the sights are in their part of the world, so they should decide.
To summarize, Third Eye Travel did an excellent job organizing and coordinating our trip!! Anyone thinking of traveling in that part of the world or any area serviced by Third Eye Travel, should consider asking Third Eye Travel to make them a proposal for their trip. You may give potential customers my email address if they want to ask questions about our trip and the service provided by Third Eye Travel. Thank you.