Private Tours on Taj.

Our web site now has a link to a Signature supplier that handles shore excursions. If a group of you get together you can arrange it very easily through this company in most places in the world. The Signature suppliers are well checked and you can be comfortable using any Signature supplier. They show the price for one - or a group of people.

Go to www.brownandkeene.travel.com
Scroll down to the bottom right hand corner and link from there.

The nice thing about this company is they guarantee they will get you back to the ship sometimes a bit of a worry with a private tour - traffic jams that are out of people's control.

Guaranteed Return to Ship
We have never had a customer miss their ship. Our team possesses over 80 years of combined cruise line experience and we are not aware of a single case in which a customer on an independent tour missed a ship. In the extremely unlikely event that you miss your ship due to the late arrival of one of our tours, we will arrange and pay for your accommodations, meals, and transportation to the next port of call, and we will pay you an additional $500 per customer for the inconvenience.

However, they have NOTHING for these ports. I also checked a similiar cruise in December - nothing there either.

https://secure.shoretrips.com/main/MapSearch?code=ASI

This is another company that does tours all over the world. I pulled up Asia (link above) and they had only a few ports. The tours were sky high in our port of call in Cambodia, Sihanoukville. So high I thought it was a mistake but looked at the other ports and they were more reasonable. This leads me to believe this port does not have much of a tour structure for tourists in place. They have pricing for an individual listed but I am sure they would do a group as well if contacted.

I spent 19 days in India and had a good guide travel with us to every destination with some local guides mixed in from time to time. However the company that booked that for us does not do shore excursions ONLY full tours.

Most of these ports I have not visited before. The two ports I have been to in India are Cochin and Mumbai. The Kerala backwaters in Chochin were fascinating. Mumbai I liked Elephanta Caves there are tons of steps and they do carry you up if you pay so you do not have to walk. It is a nice pleasant boat ride out to the island and then walking up to the caves that had images of the walls. Pretty touristy but okay.

These are challenging places and unless you KNOW the tour operator I would personally suggest doing Regent tours a busload or not. I would never take on the responsibility of arranging something in these areas and I think anyone that plans on doing that needs to be very cautious.

Ken and I will be doing the Regent excursions and I think most of you know I am not really a fan either. However in this case I think it is the most sensible thing to do.

As to me arranging private tours, having been down this road in the past I really do not do this anymore. There can be so many complications. If I put a group together for some people then I feel obligated to offer it to all my clients. Then you end up on a bus just like Regent with me having just little more say in where we go and for how long and that costs a lot more - it does not make sense.

One small van last year I joined a group organized by a client of mine and we had a guide that was so bad. He was determined to do it his way and it did not matter what the group wanted. I almost got into a fight with him a very uncomfortable situation. It was worse than being in the Regent bus and we were captive just the same. The person who organized it felt responsible but was using a company that had provided a good tour the day before. Just like with Regent all guides are not created equal privately hired or on a Regent bus.