I am all in for fixed departure tours! These make the trip enjoyable as you know the schedule beforehand and all people go out together in a group. These are also not very heavy on the pocket as expenses are shared among the group of people traveling together.
One of my most memorable fixed departure tours was to Kashmir and Amritsar. I had taken a Kashmir Amritsar holiday package from Southern Travels with one of my office colleagues. Everything in the package was preplanned by the tour operator. We has a list of all the places we would see each day and everything was so well planned that it was neither over exhausting nor boring.
We were traveling with 15 people from different places. On the first day when we all met, everyone was very formal and restrained. We all started our trek to Vaishno Devi and by the time we returned, we had all become friends. Everyone had opened up and were constantly talking, gossiping and cracking jokes.
The next day we all enjoyed the beauty of Srinagar, visiting Shalimar Gardens, Chasmashahi Gardens, Nishat Bagh Gardens and Nehru Park. We also took a boat ride on the Shikara in the famous Dal lake and visited the Sri Shankaracharya Temple and Char Minar.
The visit to the Golf Course in Gulmarg was unforgettable! We took the cable car ride up to Khilanmarg Snow Point. Everyone was busy clicking pictures and posing for each others cameras. We also visited Pahalgam and saw the Saffron field before moving towards Amritsar.
On our visit to the Golden Temple, we got to learn he significance of the sarovar in the temple and many more things from an elderly Punjabi couple who were part of our group. We then visited the Jalianwala Bagh and completed out trip with our visit to the Indo-Pak Wagha Border.
The Kashmir Amritsar holiday package of Southern Travels took care of all our meals, taxis, rooms, entry tickets, etc. It was lovely experience which I will always cherish!
