Indian Subcontinent Traveller Reviews - On The Go Tours

Positives

Vishwa was an excellent tour guide, he looked after us, gave great advice, was always punctual and took great pride in the tour car. He knew the best spots to stand when visiting sites and always managed to secure good spots in restaurants with the best views. He ironed out any problems and was a pleasure to be with.

Vishwa gave us a very detailed itinerary on day one, so we knew exactly what we would be doing and when

The accommodation we stayed in, overall was very good. With the exception of the deer park where we had fleas in the bed and a rat in the room.

The food was excellent both at the hotels and the places we went to en-route

The trips were great, with the exception of the elephant orphanage. The guides on the trips were really good and very informative. Especially at the tea plantation and lion rock

Negatives

We arrived at the first hotel at about 10.00am. As I knew we'd arrive early after a 16 hours of travel I arranged through On the Go for an early check in at 10.30. Unfortunately the hotel had no record of this and only let us check in at 13.30. - Very dissapointing start.

The Deer park hotel wasn't great, as mentioned above

Elephant orphanage - We went down to the river to see the elephants. The whole exercise seemed to be more about getting tourists to pay to feed/have their photo taken with the elephants rather than the welfare of the elephants. The elephants were clearly afraid of the handlers, and moved away when they came near. We saw the handlers jab the elephants quite a few times with sharp pointy sticks - we found this behaviour quite distressing.

There was more driving than we originally anticipated. A couple of the days seemed a bit over ambitious in terms of all we had to fit in in the time available. Mainly due to all of the driving involved.

On our final day our itineray stated that we would be picked up by 4.00pm, no-one had arrived by 4.20, so we called African adventures. They said a car would be there in 5 mins. No-one arrived so we called again, there seemed to be some confusion over where we were and why we hadn't been picked up, several different reasons were given. There were several more phone calls backwards and forwards to try to sort out and they evenually said they were going to hire somone locally to pick us up. We were eventually picked up 70 mins late. This unfortunately made the end to the trip quite stressful. ”  

Kalum was a fantastic guide. He was helpful, professional, friendly and knowledgable. He provided us with historical and contextual information everywhere we went which gave us a real flavour of Sri Lanka. He also made some great suggestions like the massage and elephant ride, as well as taking us to a place for lunch in traditional surroundings with great food. We would definitely return as our trip went far too quickly! Thank you!”  

There is a lot of time on the coach on this tour, and I think it is too short by a couple of days. we didn't have time to look around Kandy on foot, or Colombo - not the guide's fault, but there was too much travelling in between places to allow time for this in 8 days. all the hotels were good except the one in Nuwara Eliya which was not good. (the staff were nice though) The hotel as Kandy was so out of the way that it was imparactical to go into town in the evening to have a look round independantly, and there was no time in the day for this. I would have liked more time at some of the sites, particularly Sigariya and Polonnaruwa, as I think there was more to see than we had time for. Lovely trip - but you don't do the country justice by cramming it all in.”