Rating : 2 star. Palace On Wheels December 2005 , 16-Dec-2005
Reviewer: Allan Boyd from UK
My wife and I have just returned from a Trip on the Palace on Wheels.````This trip is billed as 5* accomdation and luxurious with world class facilities on the train. In reality the train itself is really no better than 2* - though the service is good.````The rooms on the train are outdated not at all comfortable and not even safe. For example the hot water is stored in a small tank for each room that is so small that a hot shower will last less than 5 minutes. The air conditioning is more like a hurricane. Constantly air is blown though and is very noisy - turn you car a/c to full power and x 10 to get the affect. The first room we had a pipe burst in the bathroom and steam came out under high pressure. There is an electric socket right inside the shower cubical to turn on/off the hot water.````There is no tv despite this being shown on their web site and the rooms are very small. The lighting is rubbish with bare bulbs above the beds. The radio cannot be turned off - it needs to be switched to a channel that is not tuned in.````The restaurants are a joke. When I poured over the web-site my understanding was that there two restaurants from which a variety of dishes could be ordered like any normal restaurant. In reality the menus are fixed daily and consist of small portions of mainly Indian food that you can opt to have or not. There is little change in the food daily. As mentioned wine is not included in the cost of the trip and is very expensive in India - even the rather poor quality Indian wine is more than twenty British pounds per bottle (i.e. almost $40)! The food itself is not great either. Passengers get a choice of going to the restaurant at 7pm or 8:30pm for the second sitting. The first night I was the chair collapsed on the poor guy behind me who was lucky not to injure himself.````The tours out of the train do not work well either. A guide for forty people might be reasonable for a school trip but for the kind of money this trip costs it is really not good enough. In wildlife parks it is worse with so many people there is little or no chance of seeing anything and there is not enough time in these places either.````At the restaurants out of the train all the meals are buffet meals and again almost entirely Indian - which is fine if you want to eat Indian all week and like buffets.````This trip costs more than double per night of staying in the Imperial Hotel in Delhi - which is a very nice 5* hotel. It is cheaper and much more enjoyable to fly/drive. You get the time to see what you want when you want and can hire you own car and guide for much less than the train (a good hotel will provide these). My advice to anyone thinking about going on the POW tour is to avoid. We got off after three nights as we could not take anymore. We talked to some people who went all seven nights and it did not get better for them. They agreed that it was more like 2* and one couple said their travel agent had told them so.``

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