Sounds fantastic. We did our own trip to Cambodia and Laos earlier this year - love SE Asia. We are currently planning our trip to Sri Lanka in March. We both early retired to give us a chance to travel before we get too past it.
The holiday was booked through Imagine Crusing and the cruise ship was the Celebrity Millennium. I would say I thought the cruise part, other than the day trips, was poor.
As we did, have a great contact for direct booking taxi, safari etc if you’d like?
Northern India (Superb)
Millennium is an old ship, but our favourite of all ships was the summit.
Yes please!
Yes - but Tim -were you in the truck that first spotted the Tigers? We were when we visited and
First visit to South America is booked for next year: Peru, Brazil, Argentina. As someone said earlier, it’s good to do the long trips while you can.
Yes, but, after about 45 mins we left and one of the cubs grabbed a large piece of the kill and ran closer to the trucks
Aye I’ve booked my Premier Inn in Exmouth for a few days in February
Given the state of the roads your journey to Exmouth will likely be not much shorter than my flight to Lima with a commensurate risk of developing deep vein thrombosis
We did a private escorted tour when we went to Thailand and Vietnam pre covid. We weren't then confident about doing that sort of a trip on our own. It was the best of both worlds - escorted all the way with guides but just us. We wouldn't do again as happy looking after ourselves although we use local guides and drivers when it's warranted eg Angkor Wat earlier this year. I'd have thought the major thing for you is good travel insurance covering all your issues (I have three major health issues so know the problem!). Canada and Australia will be relatively easy to access health support and no language barrier. Hope you can find a way to make it work.
We did a private one in Thailand a couple of years ago - it was really excellent. The tour involved a lot of overland travelling so having both a driver and guide made the trip far more relaxing. Having the guide - who was fantastic - meant we got to see and learn so much more than we otherwise would have done too (even simple things like navigating around busy key tourist sites). We weren’t - or didn’t feel - herded around at any point at all….it was all at our pace with quite a bit of flexibility. Having a local guide would I imagine give you a heck of a lot of reassurance.
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AgreeWe did a private one in Thailand a couple of years ago - it was really excellent. The tour involved a lot of overland travelling so having both a driver and guide made the trip far more relaxing. Having the guide - who was fantastic - meant we got to see and learn so much more than we otherwise would have done too (even simple things like navigating around busy key tourist sites). We weren’t - or didn’t feel - herded around at any point at all….it was all at our pace with quite a bit of flexibility. Having a local guide would I imagine give you a heck of a lot of reassurance.
The ‘big trip’ the following year (4 weeks in Canada/Alaska) we used the same firm (Audley Travel) wasn’t guided but self-drive. Again they were great and came up with a fantastic suggested itinerary and organised everything but this year (6 weeks in Oz) we decided to do it all ourselves. This worked absolutely fine but the research and booking everything takes absolutely ages (and I spent 6 weeks certain that we were going to find ourselves without a hotel one night or something
I reckon using the agency added something like 30% to the cost of the tailored trips (based on Canada). I’d do it again though in the right circumstances, particularly anywhere where language, driving, safety etc might be more of an issue - basically what @Since1982 says
Agree about the research, it's a full time task for weeks on end!We did a private one in Thailand a couple of years ago - it was really excellent. The tour involved a lot of overland travelling so having both a driver and guide made the trip far more relaxing. Having the guide - who was fantastic - meant we got to see and learn so much more than we otherwise would have done too (even simple things like navigating around busy key tourist sites). We weren’t - or didn’t feel - herded around at any point at all….it was all at our pace with quite a bit of flexibility. Having a local guide would I imagine give you a heck of a lot of reassurance.
The ‘big trip’ the following year (4 weeks in Canada/Alaska) we used the same firm (Audley Travel) wasn’t guided but self-drive. Again they were great and came up with a fantastic suggested itinerary and organised everything but this year (6 weeks in Oz) we decided to do it all ourselves. This worked absolutely fine but the research and booking everything takes absolutely ages (and I spent 6 weeks certain that we were going to find ourselves without a hotel one night or something
I reckon using the agency added something like 30% to the cost of the tailored trips (based on Canada). I’d do it again though in the right circumstances, particularly anywhere where language, driving, safety etc might be more of an issue - basically what @Since1982 says
…..the number of Russians in some areas now making it a bit less pleasant though (for tourists and locals)
That’s a fab trip in the making