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India Tour of architects: how it should be?
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NEO
Thu Jul 20 2006, 07:31am Print
Admin Registered Member #4 Joined: Thu Aug 04 2005, 04:54am
: Dhaka
Posts: 666
 UAP architecture students are planning for a whole India tour from the university.
But we are now in several indecisions! First of all, we are confused about hiring a travel agency for the tour management or managing the entire tour by ourselves, we still don’t know what it should be. Experienced seniors suggest not hire any travel agency as they always mess with hotel selection in India.
Another thing is our rout. What should be the rout of architecture students in India tour? How can we manage the entire rout in shortest travel and shortest time? Lots of questions need suggestion…..
Experienced people….. help us out..
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nirghum
Fri Jul 21 2006, 05:57am
Registered Member #26 Joined: Mon Nov 28 2005, 05:52pm
: bits N bites
Posts: 503
 here i would like to add some tips, which may seems of very minimum significance but as these are from my long experiences of travelling, i know you wont regret, following them.
first of all keep your luggage feather light.
and it would be great if a group of four or five can mannage to arrange one sack for luggage. it would be brilliant. in indian rail station there you will find a service called cloak room. where with a minimum payment you can dump your luggages. they are reliable. most important is to know that they are there to help you. so whenever you reached to any station dump your luggages there. and move out, while moving arround the sites or wthin cities it would be foolish to carry your luggages with you. and when you know that there are service to diposite your luggages.
while planing the route, plz study well the website called
indianrail.gov.in this site will be your friend all through out your india tour. which will tell you the trains available wthin two station, fair, and availability. spend some time with the site and you wont regret your time.
in case you couldnt mannage good tickets, or reservations for all , say you are 50 but you ahve got only 30 birth reserved, then waht do you do. 30 will board in sleeper class and other go to generall class. surely no. though a train official will say so. but you board in on the sleeper class. when tt comes. some very cool from your tem, tlk with the tt. he will shout a loat. why have you board up on this compertment go to third class, or passenger class. but you know the shouting is jsut may be 100 rupees per person. and you are through. yeh money can solve any anger. but surely they wont be as fast as a bangladeshi tt would. he will shout first. but you know you need to send a real cool guy to settle down the deal. when he gets tired of shouting, coolly approach 100 rupee. and you can mannage a birth in a crowded train. its jsut how cool you can handle the deal.

while booking the tickets, visit customer care mannager, or station mannager. and ask him for speciall discount on bulk purchase,. and there is a special plan of indian railway for those who buy the whole rout going and coming back ticket at a time. that will save a lot. till now this much i think i will add more later. every point of above are very vital. plz feel free to ask on them if any question.
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lizu
Sat Jul 22 2006, 12:07am
Registered Member #58 Joined: Thu Jun 22 2006, 08:37am
: Singapore
Posts: 4
 Tauhid, first suggestion is never hire a travel agency. The will make the tour hell and u would not able to visit the places that an architecture students should go. They are more interested in taking the places from where they will get comission.
Nirghum has already given very practical and helpful sugesstion . U should count on that.
From my experinece of travelling with large groups ( BUET and UAP) as well as alone, I think the most important hing is to gett the train ticket and hotel booking. What I did always booked the tickets for the entire journey from Kolkata or Delhi from where I started the journey. Firstu should try the special qouta for the foreign tourists in the special booth for tourists. One person can by five tickets so bring some of friends with you according to the group size. However, any travelagent or even hotel manager can do it with some commission.Getting the ticket for the first leg of the journey is important otherwise u have to stay in Kolkata unnecessary for some days. That best thing is to plan ur visit in such way that that time to be spent in Kolkata can be used proper way. U could stay in Kolkata for couple of days at the beginning and visit the imporatnt places around. U can also arranged ticket from some BD travel agencies from Kolkata to Delhi. Because delhi is the most convinient place to get all the rail tickets and do the hotel bookings. Regarding hotel booking, first make a list of the hotels using lonely planet or Vromon Shongi where u intend to stay. Always try to confirm the hotel of the city u r going next before u start ur journey. U can easily do that by simply making phone call. Looking for hotel after arriving with a large group is the real problem. Regarding the route their is no shortcut. Diifferent route can be followed but it would need at least three weeks of time to cover the most interesting places because of the distance. The route we have followed during our student life was Kolkata-hyderabad-aurangabad-bombay-ahmedabad-udaipur-jaipur-agra-delhi-nainital-delhi-kolkata. It took 40 days. For the UAP trip we followed Kolkata-jalgaon-aurangabad-ahmedabad-udaipur-jaipur-agra-delhi-chandigarh-shimla-delhi-kolkata. It was a 20 days trip. Try to use the latest train time table to finalize the route and always keep the long journeys in the night and by train. Try to visit a resort like place at the end to revitalize urself. Thats all I can say for the time table. For consultation u can contact Architect Polash or Architect Khalid who were a part of the management team during our India trip while we were student. Architect Munna( UAP) was very helpful while we were doing the UAP trip. U can contact him regarding route different things that we have confronted. Any way, best of luck. If u need some more info , u can contact me.
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nirghum
Sat Jul 22 2006, 05:27am
Registered Member #26 Joined: Mon Nov 28 2005, 05:52pm
: bits N bites
Posts: 503
 yep no travel agency, they can ruin your whole thing. as they cant think your way. they only bother their business. even in any case feel to take help from any travel people, try to find the indian govment official tourism center. unlike bangladesh, you can trust their govt. services. specially their govt. tourism department are quite helpful and working. and twice vote for no travel agency.
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NEO
Thu Jul 27 2006, 10:40am
Admin Registered Member #4 Joined: Thu Aug 04 2005, 04:54am
: Dhaka
Posts: 666
 Many thanks for the posts.
But we have no guide with us, who is this experienced and smart as Lizu sir or Nirghum.
So we are going to engage a travel agency. This agency has already worked with Khulna University Architecture department and BUET. We talked with the people who hired them before. They said, this agency is good, they give quite satisfactory service. After that we preceded.
We are confirming all the detailed schedule with Hotel booking confirmations, even we are going to fix the menu what we are going to eat over there with the travel agency. We are making tight plan.
Edited Thu Jul 27 2006, 10:41am
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lizu
Mon Jul 31 2006, 01:48am
Registered Member #58 Joined: Thu Jun 22 2006, 08:37am
: Singapore
Posts: 4
 Dear Tauhid,

Although u have decided, I am still against using a travel agency. It will make ur tour rigid. U will have real problem if u want to make some changes while enroute. Keep one thing in ur mind, me or Nirghum were not born as experienced. It through the work we made so. Why dont any of you take the leadership? While we were students we did it ourselves. I did not face any problem ( also some other batches did so). In a sense it is a great oppurtunity to be self dependent and enhance ur leadership ability. However, whatever u do my best wishes will always be with u all. Bon Voyage!
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Yasir
Thu Aug 17 2006, 01:10am
Registered Member #138 Joined: Sun Aug 13 2006, 01:56am
: chennai
Posts: 92
 when u coming to india??? will u be visiting the south of it??
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NEO
Thu Aug 17 2006, 07:01am
Admin Registered Member #4 Joined: Thu Aug 04 2005, 04:54am
: Dhaka
Posts: 666
 Nah.. we are not going to south.
Our rout is something like: Dhaka - Kolkata - Delhi - Agra - Jaypur - Chandigargh - Ajanta-Elora - Ahmedabad - Mumbai - Shimla - Kolkata - Dhaka.
Till i was going with the team.. Haidarabad was also in our list. As few of ours including me who are shouting for Haiderabad are now going to ARCASIA Students Jamboree at Beijing. From our department 40 students are going to India from 15th September and we 8 students are going to Dhaka - Beijing - Shanghai - Hongkong - Dhaka for ARCASIA starting from 16th September. So people who are going to Beijing are missing the fabulous India tour (me too )
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