We chose Ganesh travel after visiting with the head guy, Sebastian. On the surface he appeared to be a nice guy who could answer all of your questions to your satisfaction, but that didn’t last. He turned out to be a complete scheister! He told us that he would meet us in front of the Saffron Restaurant at 7:30am the next morning with his jeep and we could have breakfast at Saffron until 8:00am when we would start our safari. However, that’s not how it happened. Instead, as we headed towards Saffron a guy approached us and told us to follow him. “Who is this guy?” we thought, so we asked and he said he was from Ganesh Travel. He was just an average person like anyone else on the street. He did not have any type of identification to prove that he was from Ganesh Travel, so we were very skeptical. He told us that the jeep was parked in front of their hotel. Hotel? What hotel? Never did Sebstian mention anything to us about a hotel. Especially since he told us to meet in front of Saffron and have breakfast there. So we arrive in front of a hotel and there was no jeep. Instead, he tells us to go upstairs and have breakfast there. We are not happy … Are we being scammed right now? Who are these guys? I start to question them and he offers to call up Sebastian to prove who they were. At that point I took his word for it, but we were not pleased that they were clearly trying to make some extra money from us since they wanted us to have breakfast at their hotel and even wanted us to book a room with them. If Sebastian had been straight with us from the beginning then none of this had to happen and he might still have a little bit of a reputation with us!
We refused to have breakfast at their hotel, but we did decide to book a room with them because it was cheap at 150 rupees ($3.41) per night and was also nicer than Renuka. We figured, what the heck, we already booked a safari through them but we certainly aren’t going to give them any more business than this!
After waiting at their hotel for about 30 minutes we were finally led out of the hotel on a walk through town until we reached the front of the fort gate where Sebastian was sitting. He put on his fake smile and pretended to be our friend, but we were not happy and wanted to know why he lied to us? He denied that he told us he would meet us in front of Saffron, but instead would send someone there. He also thought it was harmless that his buddy led us to his hotel to have breakfast and book a room. You can take this anyway you want, but at the very least, he was completely unprofessional and didn’t even want to offer an apology, instead, he just appeared completely surprised that we were upset. Eventually, he did say he was sorry, but clearly only said it as a consolation, he just doesn’t understand the meaning of customer service. A smooth talking liar.
A couple of other gripes: He offered to sell some beer to everyone on the safari for 100 rupees per bottle and promised that it would be cold by using a special method of wrapping the beer in a watered cloth. A complete lie that was. Two people chose to buy the beer since it was promised cold, but they didn’t even drink them, so I asked to feel the bottle and they were luke warm at best. The camel guides also said that it would not be cold. The other thing that he promised was that we would not see any other camel tours. He said they go 50 km away where no one else goes, but sure enough, within 10 minutes into our journey another safari tour was right behind us and for most of the safari they followed us like a poor step child. At night they joined us since their tour guide wasn’t singing for them ;). I’m not saying that it was a bad thing, it’s just that if you make a promise, you should keep it.
If Sebastian was replaced, I would recommend Ganesh Travel.
You can read about our camel safari here.
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