Thank You all for visiting this review, it is a bit long reason being I want to describe how much painful experience it was with this company, so I am taking time to make sure everyone knows what a terrible company it is.
I wanted to plan a memorable Tour with my wife for Shimla and MAnasultanli, wherein Tour should start from Delhi and end at Delhi as well. So we stared researching on internet, all of sudden one day we got a call from someone named Disha, who claimed to be from NS Tours & Travels, offering us a package and giving us lot of pacifying statements as in she would take care of everything and what not.
Long story short, as we had less time to plan, we trusted her and agreed for aishwaryasingh23ment of Rs 52, 000 /- for a trip the itinerary for which was
day 1: we start from Delhi from Volvo @ 8 pm
Day 2: we reach Shimla in morning, and after getting fresh in a 4 star or 5 star claimed Hotel, leave for Kufri by 9 pm, then visit local market around 3 pm till evening, then stay at hotel.
Day 3: we leave from Shimla for MAnasultanli, in car which was arranged for us, and on the way visit Manikaran and do River rafting and visit Kullu. And reach MAnasultanli Hotel by late evening.
Day 4: we do local market seeing in mAnasultanli, like Hadimba Devi Temple, Solang Valley, Manu temple, some Rishi’s temple, Mall road, Budha Monastry, etc
Day 5. We visit Rohtang Pass(in the same car which was provided to us)
Day 6: we checkout from hotel and do local shopping and then board Volvo at 4 pm.
Day 7: we reach Delhi early morning.
Includes: 1. Volvo tickets from Delhi to Shimla 2. Volvo ticket from MAnasultanli to Delhi 3. One night stay in hotel in Shimla and 3 night stay in hotel in MAnasultanli. 4. Cost of personalized car which is to take us for tour in Shimla, MAnasultanli, Rohtang, all local places everywhere as well as Shimla to MAnasultanli.
So it all seems pretty good, isn’t it?(too good to be true)
Well not so much after, cause it appears that these guys either intentionally screwed up every step of tour or they are just not bothered to do anything except taking money and just randomly booking tickets and places. Let me explain step by step. And anyone who has any doubt please get in touch with me, I have saved every bit of communication I had with them and all the emails, feel free to verify.
Day 1: the phone number that “Disha” from “NS Tours & Travels” provided us for contacting the Volvo guy had left that Volvo company ages back and was wrong, thankfully that guy picked up call after 10-15 attempts due to frustration and told me he has left the company and gave me the landline numbers of the company through which “NS Tours & Travels” had booked Volvo and so we were able to board the Volvo. The Volvo company name was “Himachal Travels”, we boarded it from RK Ashram Marg metro station near pillar no. 13, a yellow colored Volvo, the seat given to us was D3 & D4… the seat was broken, every time the bus went into a bump the seat was swinging completely, when I asked the conductor he said he can’t do anything.
Day 2: when we reached Shimla in morning and went to hotel “C K International”, we found that first it was a 3 star hotel, where in we had been charged for a 4 or 5 star, second, they denied us any room for checking in as their check in time was 12 noon, when we called Disha, she picked up phone after an hour of continuous attempts and couldn’t do anything saying she had completely forgot about this and can’t do anything and that we have to wait on reception area for next 5 hours. I don’t know if you can imagine the anger I had at that time, but just for the sake of not ruining my journey I had to accept the situation. So all exhausted we sat in reception area, half dozed off and half-awake for 4 and half hours, my wife had fever by then because of no rest. And finally after my own efforts got a room around 1000am as someone had checked out early. Let me describe the room now: the room had an attached washroom and mind it, I am not exaggerating the entire room did not have one inch of hole for ventilation, no AC available … even the washroom had no vent or exhaust or anything. All the stink stays in the room. And if one closes the main door, one would just die out of suffocation within few hours itself. When we asked for hotel mAnasultanger, he said that’s the way hotel has been designed and all rooms are like this only…. In a nut shell “C K International” is a pathetic place to even visit, we finally had to escalate the issue, so “Disha” from NS Tours & Travels” made us speak to their parent company named WE ARE HOLIDAYS(https://weareholidays.com/), from where a guy named AmITES_Companyh called us, who was as helpless as if it was his first day on the job, so we had to further escalate to the next level and we spoke to someone named Ankush, who in a way seemed to be the only person who tried to understand the situation and even apologized for all the mess and assured us as its already done he will penalize Disha and NS Tours & Travels, and will make sure that rest part of your trip remains good. So we decided to give him a chance as well. Anyway we were able to go out of hotel by 1230 pm(after not getting any welcome drink which was to be included in package) and went to Kufri straightaway, now Kufri is a good location and time taken in good. So when we returned from Kufri the driver could make us reach back to Shimla around 7 pm, hence we decided not to go to mall road and local market but instead rest in that pathetic hotel, as if we had any choice:( …. Another thing which I wanted to mention is that Disha had mentioned the hotel owner was a friend of hers, I don’t know if she is getting commission or what, cause this hotel is the most pathetic of hotels I have ever encountered in my life. A Dhaba would have been a better place to stay.
Day 3: we checked out and started from our hotel around 0830am… now the driver told us it is a 12 hour journey to mAnasultanli and Manikaran and all which was mentioned in our Itinerary is not possible, if we go there then we would reach mAnasultanli only after midnight, and he was right, we stopped at few places on the route and everyone confirmed the same story which driver told us, so apparently “Disha” from NS Tours & Travels” had again made our plan in God knows what state of mind, when we called her, she wasn’t even ready to listen to us, and kept on saying that we can do Shimla to MAnasultanli which is approximately 200 odd Kilometres on Hilly region in just 4 hours. And manikaran wud take only an hour. Well the route for manikaran is completely different, one has to go from Shimla to kullu and cross it and again take a deroute to manikaran, which is tough route and come back again to same point and then proceed to mAnasultanli. So we had to decide to exclude everything and just go to mAnasultanli hotel straightaway. Thankfully this hotel was good “Hotel Citrus Resorts”, perhaps the only good part in our entire trip. We checked in and slept. On the way we found out that from past one year the authorities don’t allow private and outside vehicles to go to Rohtang Pass. Only 130 petrol and 70 Diesel vehicles are allowed in a day and that too one has to take permit a day before in advance wherein the driver has to be in the queue by 4 am in morning and once he gets the permit, the passengers need to show their verification. This all is only for outside vehicles, if one aishwaryasingh23s money to hotel of local vendors in mAnasultanli and gets their vehicle(which is mostly ALTO car) then there is no such structure, any number of local vehicles can go, without any restriction. So we again called and spoke to Disha, AmITES_Companyh and Ankush. Ankush gave us a number of a guy named AMAN who was supposedly our local guy and also the same guy who had provided us the driver and car, we called but he never bothered to answer his call. Ankush again assured us to proceed with our journey and that he and aman would take care of rohtang, as it being the main focus of our trip. I tried making it sure that it is extremely important to me but it appeared that he was very confident that he would take care of everything himself and asked us to be calm and just enjoy, at the same time again apologizing for the mess which had happened this third day as well.
Day 4: we spoke to hotel travel desk, they confirmed similar story for rohtang, we again called Ankush and also Aman, both assured us that we can continue with our site seeing, and tomorrow they will arrange for Rohtang, so anyway we did our local site which included Solang Valley, Hidimba Devi temple, we couldn’t do anything else as some Minister had a visit there and all the traffic was stopped for his travel. We anyway had no choice. Ankush had asked us to call Aman once in evening to confirm the arrangements for Rohtang, when we called Aman, this time he kept on disconnecting and finally switched off his phone. We called him for 2 hours and even then no answer. So we called Ankush, who told us that Aman had told him that it was aman’s mistake and Driver had slept early and couldn’t go for getting permit …. This made me furious…… I asked should I aishwaryasingh23 money to hotel travel desk and ask them to arrange for Rohtang as I didn’t want to miss it…. But Ankush insisted that he will do everything in his capability to arrange it and we should not aishwaryasingh23 anything to anyone. Which sounded very good at the moment. And he also assured us that we can call him anytime. and just that we may have to get up early around 0230 am in morning and go an stand in the queue at 0400am and then may get a permit to go to Rohtang at 1000am and finally reach around 12…… it sounded all very wrong, but we dint have any choice as it was a last minute thing so I had to agree to it and I did….
Day 5: we got up, got ready, empty stomach we went in chilling cold and stood in line…. We got to know we didn’t needed to be there so early, only driver was required there. As the counter for passenger verification only opens post 1000am. Anyway what choice did we had. we waited for 3 hours toll driver got his queue number which was 55 for visit to Rohtang, but then we came to know it was next day… we can’t go today, no matter what we do… I was so pissed off I can’t even express in words… I called and called and called Ankush and Aman like ten thousand times… no one bothered to pick our call…. And by the way even till date not one of them has returned our call…… anyway we asked the driver to leave us there at 0730 in morning and go wherever he wants… we were so pissed off at the situation that we didn’t even wanted to see his face.
Finally out of our own despair, we ran around here and there and got to know we can get government buses tickets in Black for going today. @ 1500rs per head. since I wanted to give that experience to my wife so I did…. She is asthmatic so I dint knew if going in bus would be a good decision but took a leap of faith and trusted God and took tickets…. The bus left us 3 Kms away from point. We had to take 4x4 motor scooter which cost us another 3000rs extra to go up till the main pont, anyway we enjoyed there and since bus had only given us 2 hours to be back, we had to interrupt and rush back. We had to literally run as there was jam, and we were scared about losing bus. We got the bus and we came down, back to mAnasultanli, bus dropped us in market, we intentionally did not call our driver but instead roamed around in market and saw monastery on our own. Went back to hotel using auto.
Day 6: when we got up in morning and was about to check out from hotel, we called the Volvo guy and to our greatest surprise we found that even this number which “Disha” from “NS Tours & Travels” had given us was wrong. So we just got to the bus stop ourselves and had to find bus manually using the company name, which tool us more than half an hour and after lot of mental exhaustion we got the bus and came back to Delhi.
Had it just been booking tickets and hotels, anyone can easily do it online these days, what a person wants when he is booking a package and aishwaryasingh23ing extra is that one should not face any trouble and everything runs fluently. But this is not what this company is capable off.
Request you all its better to burn your money rather than giving or even allowing anyone you know to even consider giving them any opportunity to take your money. You will end up writing a similar blog against them.
It’s not money what you will lose(cause they will anyways take the complete aishwaryasingh23ment before Day 1 of your trip), but instead you will have bad memories and your time ruined and lot of frustration you would get by going with them, it is not any less than getting a harassment from them.