Ladakh tour experience. Review on Makemytrip

An advice to everyone who wants to book plane tickets using this site. Use the airline's site instead. For searching low fares use ixigo.com. It takes you to the airline's site after showing exact fare(without any service fee that is charged by sites like makemytrip).

I have been a regular client of makemytrip.com. I have booked many holidays, flight tickets(when the airlines' sites don't have payment options apart from credit cards) and sometimes hotels. I have to admit that most of the times the service has been satisfactory, but the recent experience with the Ladakh trip certainly exposed a lot of holes in their weave.

Before getting on with the experience I would like to clarify that I am not complaining against the bad weather, because a natural calamity is not in anyone's control. But the arrangement of alternatives, providing timely and accurate information and serving the travelers are certainly the organiser's duty. If makemytrip continues to be associated with the hotels and agents that were present during our trip, rather absent during most of the time, then it won't be long before they lose credibility.

It was a package tour of Ladakh for 4 days, beginning 13th May 2010, ex Delhi, with inclusions of Delhi-Leh and return air tickets, hotel stay at Leh, vehicle for sight seeing & airport transfers and Breakfast and Dinner on all days. we had booked our Mumbai-Delhi & return tickets independently.

Everyone faced the following problems. The deficiency of service is quite visible:

1> The food provided by the hotel(Grand Willow) was horrible. 3 people in the group got loose motions on 2nd day. There was no one from makemytrip to listen to our complains. On the last day we raised our voices and we got better food. We could clearly see that the food served to us on the last day was what the hotel used to serve to their customers who weren't the part of the pre-paid package tour and who used to order a-la-carte. All the good quality food was kept away from us and we were served lower quality food on the first 3 days. I am sure that Grand Willow was included only after the demand for Ladakh trip increased(Makemytrip had no tickets available before 13th June during Mid April when we had booked. There were 2-3 makemytrip groups touring parallelly in Leh when we were there, presumable in different hotels). I am not complaining about the standard of the hotel stay here. It was satisfactory.

2> The person, Mr. Sunil, who was supposed to be our trip manager and who was supposed to accompany us on all our excursions was absent on all days after the first day. Upon check in at our hotel, he gave us instructions with a severe attitude. Like we were school children. Then he went missing till things got really messed up on the last day.

3> We couldn't visit Pangong lake and Khardungla because of bad weather on both days. Again, makemytrip is not to be blamed for the bad weather. But for the following:

a) There was no alternative arrangement done in case of bad weather. Only on the last day when things got a little out of hand and Mr. Organiser was summoned did he suggest us 2 local places that were not in the itinerary. Since makemytrip was paying our money to the "Wisdom" drivers whether we reach an intended place or not, they could have suggested those alternative places anyways. They could have been more proactive on alternatives.

b) Speaking to a lot of locals we realised that it is very common for the weather to be rough for this part of the year(Ladakh's winter extends till May, only July-August are hot). I met another group who were independently touring Ladakh(not with makemytrip) and even they couldn't go out on 3 different days because of bad weather. This brings up few important questions:

i) If Ladakh's weather is this bad in early May then why organise tours during this part of the year in the first place? Why not warn people in advance about bad weather?

ii) If a tour is organised in this season then why is such a tight schedule made? Why not extend the tour from 4 days to 6 days to accomodate for unplanned cancellations?

iii) Why not include beautiful local places like Stok palace, Sangam(Nimmu), Hall of Fame(Army museum dedicated to Kargil victory) and the school shown in the movie 3 idiots in the itinerary as alternatives?

iv) Why not keep local Monasteries on the last day's itinerary so that even if the weather is bad and the long roads are closed we can cover those monasteries? i.e., If on the first day we are visiting Pangong lake and if due to bad weather it is not possible to cross Chang-la pass, then we can easily cover local monasteries that day. Then we can try for Pangong lake excursion again on the last day.

4> There was a discount of 2000 rs. on offer to anyone who booked the tour before 15th April. Even after satisfying the criterion, we were not given the discount, citing the following reason: The discount scheme was launched after we made the booking, and makemytrip has all the rights to change the terms and conditions. Fine, but if we didn't get the discount, then why did 2 Gentlemen, who were a part of the tour, get the discount? How come terms and conditions apply to us and not to them? One more matter that came up was that the 2000 rs discount mentioned was not clear. Whether the discount is per person or "per group"? No surprise that they gave a "per group" discount to the 2 Gentlemen.

Finally, I have no complains against the place and the people of Ladakh. We had a very good experience. But for the money we had shelled out, our experience could have certainly been better had makemytrip done a few things differently. Just to put things into perspective, makemytrip uses group booking 1 year in advance and their total airline cost per person is only rs 850(mum-del-leh-del-mum)+ 450(airport charges)+ 100. Whereas they ask for 18000 to 20000 rs per head for the trip. A special mention for Jet Airways who followed the rules set by Govt and arranged for our accomodation and food well when the Delhi bound flight was cancelled due to bad weather. Our coordinator Mr. Neeraj Sharma came to our hotel and was more proactive in that one day than makemytrip's Mr. Sunil was in those 4 days. He even replied to our phone calls regarding airport transfer properly.