NEVER BOOK A HOLIDAY THROUGH IMAZINE HOLIDAYS! They are crooks who rob you of your money and provide third-grade service. Worse, they are extremely poorly organised, and will not coordinate anything with the hotels where they book you, so you will be reduced to playing that role as well, meaning your holiday will turn into one long non-stop headache. We paid Rs. 16000 for a three-day Manali-Kulu-Shimla package with them. If we had instead arranged all bookings by ourselves, we could have have service twice as good at around Rs. 10-12000 without enduring the headaches borne out of shoddy coordination. Here's a summary of how Imazine ruined our summer vacation:

1. Our tour was 'coordinated' by a woman named Akashi, who is easily the most incompetent hospitality industry customer service person I have ever been in touch with. Our intended itinerary was Chadigarh-Manali-Shima-Chandigarh and we made our bookings 3 months in advance, with Akashi promising to make ALL the travel arrangements. However, she did not book our chdg-manali bus saying she did not have an agent in Chandigarh. We found out the booking can be done online, and even forwarded her the website link. Her response: "Sorry, I don't know how to do this." No kidding. We made this bus booking by ourselves, sitting in Bangalore.

2. Despite us calling and reminding Akashi on the day before travel about our arrival time and bus number, no one from the Flamingo resort (in Manali, where she had booked us) came to pick us up. We spend half an hour on the road from 6 30 AM, after a supremely exhausting bus journey, calling the resort ourselves to coordinate our pick-up.

3. On arrival at Flamingo, at 7 15 AM, we were promptly informed that we could not check in until 12 PM! Akashi, who knew our arrival timing all along, never mentioned this to us.

4. The person managing Flamingo sent to the hot terrace on the fourth floor by stairs, and asked us to spend the next 4 and half hours there and wait for a room, or instead leave for sight seeing immediately - without taking a bath or freshening up after an overnight bus ride. When we insisted we wanted to bathe, he suggested we use a dirty, broken toilet on the terrace! I had to walk up and down those stairs some five times, calling Akashi and begging her to coordinate with the manager properly and arrange some proper room for us. Due to our persistence, the manager offered us a room finally at around 9 AM. This room was always available, and yet Akashi was not savvy, smart, or willing enough to put the effort to get the manager to arrange it for us!


5. The Flamingo manager then tells us that we have no sightseeing package booked though we had paid Imazine for it. Another expensive call while on roaming. Our roaming bill alone is probably 500 rs thanks to the lack of communication from Imazine. Around this time, Akashi gave us the contact of Manoj, Imazine's Manali personnel, for all further coordination. This just meant that now, instead of calling two people for everything, we now had to call three.

6. It was around 9 15, and we decided to grab breakfast (part of our package), but the Flamingo kitchen staff made food ready only at 9 30 AM. This is apparently their policy, but pales in weirdness when compared to their dinner timings, which are from 10 30 PM onwards! More on that later. Breakfast was dirty, unappetising, and consisted of fly-infested bread slices with jam already dabbed on them. One of the waiters was wearing the dirtiest clothes I have ever seen on someone who is not on the streets. There were fleas on his pullover and trousers, but he was non-chalantly moving plates around and serving people! Also, we were refused coffee saying only tea was part of the deal!

7. We decided to relax in the spare room until our original room became available, since the spare rooms washroom facility was unusable. The toilet was broken, water was leaking and there was an all-pervasive stench. The towels and sheets were quite dirty too. I repeat, we paid Rs. 16, 000 for a 3-day package, inclusive of travel by bus and accomodation. Clearly, Flamingo was not up to the standard promised by Akashi, or by the amount we paid. Akashi's response: "Flamingo is a budget hotel, you can't expect five-star comfort." I didn't know that clean sheets and working toilets were part of five-star comfort until this genius informed me so.

8. So we just washed up without bathing and tried to relax. At ten we get a call from reception asking us to get ready to move to the final room. We repacked and walked down four stories with our luggage to the reception where manager instead said our sight-seeing car was ready, and not our room! Flamingo's manager was not only rude, he was also incompetent at communicating over the intercom.

9. Thankfully we eventually got away from Flamingo and enjoyed the day at Rohtang Pass. The taxi driver who was assigned to us, refused to take us anywhere else without extra payment though the deal with Flamingo mentioned three places including Rohtang Pass for the sight-seeing on Day 1. The sightseeing package mentioned places that are not even open/worth visiting during this time of the year, and didn't have places that are also on the route but open during this time.

10. We explored the other comprable hotels in the same area in the night, found that the average room rent was Rs. 1000 including meals, and they all looked better and cleaner than Flamingo, in addition to having courteous service staff. We began to realise just how much Imazine was robbing us of, but this was only the start of our ordeal.

11. After Manali we were set to go to Shimla in a bus arranged for by Imazine. Seeing how poor and unreliable the service had been so far, we wanted to pay the final installment of our fare only on completion of the tour. But Akashi, Manoj and the Flamingo manager were rude in the way they insisted on full payment. Manoj's exact words: "Your taxi/ bus will not move until you make the full payment." And these jokers work in the hospitality industry! Manoj's logic: "I have paid all the fare to your hotel in Shimla, so the balance has to be paid in person straight away in Flamingo." We were a little relieved, in hope that since all arrangements in Shimla had already been made, we might have a better experience there. Mistake!

12. On reaching Shimla, we again found no pick-up had been arranged for us from our Hotel, lets say Hotel A (whose check-in slip Akashi had mailed us 2 months ago.) We called Akashi; Her response: Call Manoj. We called Manoj. His response: Call Mr. Kumar who is at Hotel B. We tell him, we thought we were booked in Hotel A. He says he will get back to us. He doesn't for the next 15 minutes. We call Akashi, who doesn't pick her phone. (In fact, this happened often with that woman.) We call Hotel B, googling for it on our Blackberry, and ask them for a pick-up. They have never heard of us or of Manoj!

13. Finally Manoj calls us back and asks us to find our own way to a third hotel - Hotel C! We ask him why the booking has changed, and how, given that he said he had made all payments to Hotel A in the morning. No response! We take a cab, who charges us 150 Rs.

14. We arrive at Hotel C, which is a poor man's Flamingo resort. Enough said. It had no pretentions of being even a budget hotel. The manager, however, was a very courteous and helpful man, and he told us he had heard from Manoj for the first time around one hour back! Chew on this for a moment: we book a tour package 3 months in advance. And these jokers make our bookings on the day we arrive in Shimla. In a third-rate hotel. Me and my wife realise just how badly we are being cheated.

15. Our package was supposed to include bus transportation from Shimla to Chandigarh the next day. By now, we are just relieved to be at the end of this ordeal and want to get home asap. We ask Manoj to deliver the bus tickets, and he asks us to contact the manager of Hotel C. Who in turn informs us that he will only be able to make the booking in the morning, for an evening bus. Apparently, Manoj and Akashi had never bothered to make the bus booking for three months, despite making us pay the Volvo fare! We find out from the manager that there are only 2 Volvos on the route, and he informs us in the morning that both are fully booked. We think - No Shit, Sherlock!

16. Being at the end of my tether, I call Akashi and blast her for this latest piece of incompetence. She promises to talk to the manager of Hotel B and solve the problem. She still thinks we are in Hotel A. 24 hours after we checked into Hotel C. I feel like banging my head on the wall.

17. Akashi and Manoj try their best to convince us to take a non-AC bus (though they don't plan to refund us for the difference in fare between Volvo and non-AC) to Chandigarh. I put my foot down and threaten legal action if they don't put me in a private Volvo or a cab to Chandigarh. They eventually put us in a cab, and I later found out that they had not only cheated us, but also the manager of Hotel C, who said he was going to have to pay the difference from his pocket. It left us feeling sick in the stomach, but the manager sympathised with us too, when we told him Imazine had swindled us of a much larger sum of money. Words can't describe the immense relief we felt to be in that cab back to Chandigarh. The Imazine nightmare was finally over.

This took me a good 30 minutes to type out, and I hope you understand that I did this for a reason. Please learn from my mistakes, and boycott this company. If anyone reading this has contacts in travel associations in India, or in Delhi, do forward this write-up to them. Let's do our bit to get crooks like Imazine out of business.