tours ... friendly planet

hi peeps ... i can%26#39;t find anything on here about touring with friendly planet ... has anyone ever travelled with them? i%26#39;m thinking about going to india for one of their trips ... can anyone please advise if it%26#39;s good or not ... asap!!! thanks.

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tours ... friendly planet

Hi There !!!

Never heard of friendly planet.

Where is this based?????

tours ... friendly planet

Do a search...it seems that one TripAdvisor member had a really great experience with Friendly Planet in China. I too am thinking about their India tour, so if you go, let us all know how it went!

did you ever go with friendly planet? We are thinking about booking an Italy trip with them. If you went, can you give me some feedback?

I did go with them to India and Nepal. While my brief tour of Far Eastern developing nations is one that I value, because it opened my eyes to the true nature of poverty and the imminence of war, I would not reccomend Friendly Planet to anyone with a functioning head on their shoulders.

I do not wish to re-live my poor experiences with F.P. and their subsidiary, Sita Travel, at this time, but I%26#39;ll touch on a few highlights.

48 hours before my flight left, F.P. reversed the entire itinerary, meaning that 12 hours after arriving in Delhi from New York (via London), I had to fly on to Kathmandu, leading to extreme jetlag (under the original itinerary, I would have stayed in Delhi and then enjoyed overland travel for a few days).

F.P. repeatedly put me on a different floor/in a different wing from the other tour group members, when staying in hotels (as a woman traveling alone, I found this to be a dangerous choice, especially as my fair skin, red hair, and blue eyes, sometimes meant that I needed bodyguard protection in public places).

In Delhi and in Kathmandu, the F.P. guide refused to get me to either an ATM or a phone, and so when a revolution broke out in Nepal and the airport was shut down, I had to borrow money from some Canadians to contact my family via a porter%26#39;s computer and let them know that I was safe. In fact, F.P. did not get me to either an ATM or a ISP/STD phone for 7 days...only making an effort when my brother, who I had e-mailed from Kathmandu, called their office repeatedly and threatened a lawsuit if he didn%26#39;t get to talk to me and find out if I had enough money for food/water.

When we arrived in Varanasi, via airplane, at night, our hotel reservation was lost, and still jet-lagged, we were packed into a low-class establishment with no sinks, no toilets (no troughs, no pits, nothing to relieve one%26#39;s bladder/bowels into), no potable drinking water, no air conditioning, no locks on the inside of the doors, filthy sheets, and balconies that provided local, male workers with communal access to our rooms (after refusing to sleep alone, I was allowed to bunk up with a couple from Texas for two hours, until we revolted and were packed into cars to drive 8 hours to Khajaraho, for a 2 hour nap in a hotel with toilets, where exhaustion made us all sick and feverish). Our guide would not alter the schedule to let us sleep, though every member of the group wanted to rest instead of moving on.

There is much, much, much more...but that should be enough to give you a taste of Friendly Planet%26#39;s idea of a good vacation. At the end of the trip, 30 of us dubbed the group ';Unfriendly Planet'; and several of the men destroyed their commemorative hats. A note: after receiving many, many letters of complaint, and a note from our experienced tour guide saying that he%26#39;d never guided a group for whom so many things had gone wrong, they did give us a partial refund...but it wasn%26#39;t enough (perhaps $300).

I just returned from a Friendly Planet tour of India and Nepal. It was basically a good tour, but there were some aggravations. I felt that we were rushed through the sights to make time for stops at commissioned rug stores, etc. often lasting over one and a half hours. Other than that it was a good tour and I saw many amazing things. Friendly Planet was also a bit disorganized in the pretrip activities. They gave erroneous information on both the Indian and Nepal visa application procedures. They also slightly downgraded two hotels after we had signed up. I have had better experiences with Smartours, and would recommend them over Friendly Planet.