Passenger Feedback

Firstly, we did the Bhutan pre-cruise trip. We added two days to the beginning to give us a bit more time to cope with jet lag. This worked well, the hotels we stayed in were excellent and our guide and driver were top notch. With hindsight we would have liked more time in Punakha if only to stay in the fabulous Dhensa Resort another night.

We are seasoned hikers of the steep north shore mountains of Vancouver. In no way could you describe the Takstang monastery as a 'soft hike'. We laughed about this all the way down.

Navigating Delhi airport on the way to Bhutan is a potential nightmare for travellers. Fortunately we booked in to the Holiday Inn Express and their excellent rep met us and sorted out the baggage cock-up that is inevitable if you book in to the international part of the hotel. I have a lot of further information if Pandaw want to pass it on to other travellers. Incidentally, we had real issues with Indian eVisa which apparently cannot handle anything to do with Apple despite claims to the contrary. Other passengers on the cruise had no problems with PCs and our agent was also very surprised.

The last part of the pre-cruise was a day in Calcutta which was absolutely excellent. Our guide Partho turned out to be the guide for the cruise and we were well pleased with that. The Oberoi Grand is a fine hotel and a great jumping off point for the cruise. The assembly of guests prior to embarkation was well handled although we were a little bemused as we hadn't received any of the emails which seemed to have upset a few other passengers. I think this may be because we booked through our travel agent. It wouldn't have made much difference to us as we were getting on that ship no matter what. However it was a bit of a surprise that the ship would only go as far as Ghazipur and not all the way to Varanasi.

The first week of the cruise was a genuinely excellent Pandaw experience. The staff and crew of the Katha were lovely if a little inexperienced. The transfer to the Kalaw was handled with seamless efficiency and on we travelled. The Kalaw crew and staff were superb and very attentive. Unfortunately, a lot of the passengers got sick with a nasty diarrhoea. Some did not surface for several days. Jeanette was spared this scourge by, we think, avoiding meat, fish, seafood and salad and sticking to the excellent veggie options. I've never had to take antibiotics for TD before but I took azithromycin early on and that stopped it straight away. I was fortunate in that I only missed one shore trip.

Being stuck on a sandbar is an accepted hazard and we are used to it. We got stuck for a while on the Upper Irrawaddy. That was fun too. There was however a shortage of reliable information as to when the tug was coming and how the rest of the itinerary was to be handled given that we were nearly 48 hours behind schedule. In the end the cruise ended well short of Patna at the first of the pontoon bridges. A long way short of the expected end point, Ghazipur. It quickly became evident that we would go no further and this appeared to have been known by the ship manager for some time.

The shore trip to the Bihar Museum from this location was ill-conceived and poorly planned. Of the two buses ordered one arrived an hour late, the other we did not see until the return journey. Out of over six hours we had only 50 minutes in the Bihar Museum and had to leave as the museum was closing. The visit to Harmandir Sahib was abandoned. We arrived back at the ship tired and pissed off.

I was very glad that the onward itinerary was changed to an overnight stay at Bodhgaya and then an onward flight to Varanasi. The originally planned day would have entailed a train ride back to Patna and then the dreaded bus ride back to the ship. It would have been a long day even if we had been in the scheduled location. The train ride sounded like an excellent idea until we realised it would be in the dark and arriving in Patna at nearly midnight. In the end, it turned out to be a fair compromise but our luxury cruise had turned into a bus tour.

Nalanda was great and Bodhgaya was certainly an education in expectation. A long way from the site of peace and tranquility that we had envisaged. Overall we felt that Bodhgaya had been turned in to a Bhuddist theme park. Interesting to see how far Bhuddism has come in the last 2500 years. The hotel at Bodhgaya was comfortable enough. By now I was ready for a beer.

Our guide was now apparently running the show. I'm not sure that is what he signed up for and he certainly attracted some unwarranted flak from a couple of the guests. Overall he was very friendly, approachable and informative as you would expect. We usually plug the guides for a load of extra information and discussion and he did not disappoint.

Most of the next day was taken up with the flight to Varanasi and transfer to the Tree of Life hotel. Time we would have been much happier if we had been on the ship. The hotel was excellent and the food and service were top drawer. The evening boat ride was wonderful and dinner at the Great Kebab Factory was fine only miscommunications between the drivers meant we nearly made it back to the hotel before turning round and heading back in to Varanasi.

We loved Varanasi but by this time were exhausted by long hours of bus travel and airports. Jeanette missed the morning excursion due to being totally wiped. I managed to drag myself out of bed and made it with (only) five others. It was totally worth the effort, a wonderful morning. Sarnath in the afternoon was an oasis of calm as was the hotel but it was a big let down not being on the ship.

Overall this was a real eye-opening trip for us. This is what we have come to expect from Pandaw after cruises on the Mekong and Irrawaddy. However, the second half was a serious disappointment. It certainly seemed to us that no effort was made to proceed further than the first pontoon bridge and this seemed to have been known to the director long before we had any idea that we would have to leave the ship. The following itinerary was a hastily composed compromise that worked in part but was a long way from the ease and comfort on ship that we had paid for.

I'm prepared to accept that we weren't going to make it past Ghazipur; the Varanasi part of the trip was well handled from the Tree of Life. The bit in-between fell a long way short of what we have come to expect from Pandaw.

Best wishes for the New Year
John and Jeanette
Vancouver

Concept: marvellous. There are more archaeological and historical wonders along the Ganges than on any other Pandaw trip we've taken. The villages we visited were unspoilt and the villagers wonderfully engaging.

Boats: splendid. We started on the Katha and transferred to the Kalaw because of engine trouble.

Staff: excellent. We were warned that the cruise would be run by an Indian management company. I thought the standards were as good as Pandaw. Ram as head of house-keeping was quiet, dignified, always there to help and superbly effective. The Ship Managers (Push Pak from Katha and the slim one from Kalaw) were fine, except when something went wrong, then they could be hard to track down. One example was a film show. They couldn't get it to work but instead of cancelling the showing they disappeared, leaving us to assemble, then drift away after 30 minutes. They were also not good when we got stuck on the sandbank. I accept that they didn't know how long it would take for the tug to get to us, but we would have been happier knowing that they didn't know, rather than being kept in ignorance.

Some exceptional things the staff did:

• The sandbank party. I know it's a Pandaw regular thing, but these guys were marvellous dancers and got us all going.
• Mick's 70 th birthday on board. They made a cake and made an occasion of it.
• Excellent map of the Ganges with our destinations marked.
• Excellent daily briefing notes with useful details (history, architecture etc.) on the back.

Food: excellent. We ate mainly Indian. The Sula wine was surprisingly good.

Excursions: superb, whether they were an unexpected stop at the town of Barh, or the two visits to Varanasi with excellent boat trips and a fabulous breakfast at the waterfront Hotel.

My only complaint is that, after our visit to Sarnath (which was a bit rushed), we were taken back into the chaos of Varanasi traffic to visit a silk weaving factory and shop. Those of us with no interest in shopping could have gone in one of the two minibuses, missed the traffic, and reached the hotel 90 minutes sooner.

Guides: Partha was not a success. He is thoughtful, well informed, and his talks to us as individuals or in small groups were excellent. His talk on Hinduism was truly enlightening. However, when he addressed the large group he adopted a slow delivery, often repeating key words, as though giving dictation to school children.

The other thing I found annoying was that he wouldn't sketch out the structure of a visit at the start, so, again, we felt like children being led around by teacher. He didn't explain why some changes to the excursions were being – e.g. we didn't go to Chandernagore, we went to Barrackpore. I still don't know why.

Finally, he ate all his meals with us and that didn't work. After a day we were a tightly bonded group totally at ease with each other. Partha has no small talk (at least in this setting) so everyone found themselves hoping he would go and sit elsewhere. The local guide in Varanasi was a more engaging character but he was much more interested in religion than in the sites – so much so that at Sarnath we left the group to go round by ourselves. And I think the trip to the silk weaving shop was his arrangement – see above.

Handling of the problems that occurred:

• Broken engine on Katha: no problem. All was explained, transfer was smooth.
• River closed to us for the last two days: no problem. All was explained (by Brett) at the start and the Tree of Life Hotel was very good.
• Stuck on sandbank for 40 hours: I don't see what could have been done better. It was a low point in the trip, especially since it happened in the dry state of Bihar. We should have been better informed of progress (see above).
• Pontoon bridges south of Patna. Not Pandaw's fault but we could have been better informed. We were told the good news (that we would go through at 9 pm) but not the bad news (we wouldn't go through, ever). That led to the worst event of the trip – the drive to the Museum in Patna (3 hours) giving us just 1 hour in that marvellous museum, followed by the drive back (2 and a half hours). But that wasn't Pandaw's fault. Pandaw did well to arrange a good hotel in Bodhgaya and plane travel to Varanasi.
• Sickness: most of us had diarrhoea and vomiting, combined with feeling unwell. We counted 13/19 ill; others counted 15/19. It wasn't straight-forward food poisoning (I write as a doctor) because we didn't get ill at the same time – it started soon after joining Kalaw and we went down one by one. It was clearly an infection, not just unfamiliarity with Indian food. Staff were relentless in squirting anti-bacterial rub on our hands. Without stool tests I can't say more. Was there a carrier of shigella in the staff (or passengers)? I mention shigella because the explosive nature of the diarrhoea, followed by fairly prompt recovery, suggests shigella.
• Alcohol: we had been warned, in our joining instructions, that alcohol "would not be served" in Bihar. We took this to be code for "but there's nothing to stop you drinking your own". So we were surprised that, at the Kolkata briefing, Brett took a much tougher line (and he thought we'd been properly warned, which we hadn't). So our Gin went into the Ganges.

A few more niggles:

• The arrangements for taking our shoes off on returning to the boat didn't work – we were taking them off in the narrow corridor, putting them in pigeon holes, then collecting our key, before the next couple could get to do the same. Furthermore, shoes sometimes took 12 hours to come back to us. On previous trips we would hand the shoes to the staff on boarding, which avoided queuing in the narrow space. Perhaps handling shoes is a caste issue.
• We booked cabin 105 10 months before the trip, to be far from the engine. We were given 109 (nearer to the engine) with no explanation. We queried it but got nowhere.
• Staff would rearrange the dining room furniture (above our heads) after we went to bed. Noisy.
• The shampoo and gel in the shower were too viscous to pour out. Most gel is viscous but you can squeeze the sides of the plastic containers. These containers were glass. How about handpumps?

Overall, we are glad we made this trip, even though enough went wrong for us to wonder at times. But those problems were not, on the whole, of Pandaw's making.