Far East Itinerary Question

[HiFi43]

Some advice from our experience with Oceania cruising and visiting India. Taj Mahal and Agra are very special and worth the effort to get there. Because we got to the closest hotel to the Taj in the afternoon, we where able to enter soon after sunrise the next morning before the crowds and when the light is very special. The Oceania pre-Cruise trip is the safe bet but if you don’t want to pay really that much and if you want to have a much more private tour contact Deepa at Mumbai Magic dot com. We did a multi day tour of Agra and the Taj and also added in New Delhi (we also used her group other India stops on our cruise in India). We flew, we took trains and we even had a private limo to transfer between cities. We stayed only at 4 or 5 star hotels, we we’re gone for 4 nights and the cost was significantly less than the much shorter Oceania tour. When we got back to Mumbai we even took there slum tour of Mumbai and we highly recommend that tour. Mumbai Magic organized it all. We did this as 2 couples but even if we did it as one couple it would have been much less expensive than Oceania’s tour.  The only time we did not have a Mumbai Magic guide with us was on the two flights we took between cities but the guides where at both ends of the flights. We never felt any thing but safe. We know many Oceania cruisers are risk adverse but do yourself favor  and spend the time to see the real India not the bus full of cruisers India.