do not recommend Panicker's Travels to anybody. Though they claim to be an award winning travel agents, all I could know from my experience was that they are disorganized and extremely greedy when it comes to money. Though they claim to be upgrading their vehicles often, their maintenance of them is very poor. They neither do on-time services nor check their vehicles before each trip.

In our case, their trip plan involved so much of extra travel for nothing. We were made to go to Delhi for a night-halt, which involved around 350kms extra distance.

When we requested a local trip in Delhi instead of going to Chandigarh they agreed to it, but they cancelled the Chandigarh trip and left a complete day empty without booking the Delhi local trip on the day. We realized it only when the vehicle was not sent. When we called them, they had no suitable vehicle to send and arranged a 27-seater bus for 8 people. It was a crap one. The A/C was there but the driver would not turn it on!

We were promised a tempo traveler with DVD player. There was just a CD player and that too stopped working in a couple of hours. The horn also wasn't working.

The vehicle that was arranged for us broke down on our way to Shimla at the dead of the night while passing through a dense forest hill-route and we were exposed to immense hardships. By God's grace, within a couple of hours we were able to find a tourist vehicle with the driver at the top of the hill. We had to pay a few thousands from our pocket to reach the hotel. It was actually a fault in the timing chain which is a major problem in the vehicle. This is something which they could have avoided if the vehicle was properly maintained and serviced. Service Manual clearly states when the timing chain needs to be changed and at what stage of the regular service history. They didn't even consider servicing the vehicle or check the condition of the vehicle before despatching to the client.

Out of Rs.1,11,929,(8 Day trip to Delhi/Agra/Jaipur/Rishikesh/Haridwar/Shimla AC, DVD Tempo Traveller 8 Seater Coach) I was let to hold back only Rs.10,000 to be paid on satisfactory completion of the trip. Their poor service and the inconvenience caused made me decide that I should not pay this little amount that was pending from my side. The Manager I spoke to had no answers to my complaints and questions. When I tried to speak to his boss, he would put the phone down on purpose. The way they chose was to send their people to stop us on our way to the Airport. Two of them stopped our vehicles and started shouting on the road in a very indecent manner threatening the cab drivers that they would break the cabs if they proceeded further without settling the accounts. Finally, we called the police and the hotel manager helped to solve the problem. There was not a single word of apology from Panicker's's at any stage. The Manager maintained that the breakdown of the vehicle was to be blamed on God and not on them.

From all this, I made a firm decision that I should not go with Panicker's travels ever again in my life and would ask you to think twice before you do so.