Taj Mahal excursion

We are booked on the segment of the 2018 world cruise from Cape Town to Singapore. The itinerary around India is: March 1-Male, Maldives; March 2-sea day; March 3-Mangalore; March 4-Cochin (Kochi); March 5-7 are all sea days; March 8-Rangoon, Burma. Does Oceania ever go around India and NOT offer an overland excursion to the Taj Mahal? :eek: Assuming there will be an excursion, what is the most likely schedule?

Highly doubtful that they will offer a Taj overland on that cruise. We did the exact same cruise with stop in Mangalore and Cochi and no overland was offered. You need a minimum of 3 days.

Day 1 - Air to Delhi and possibly travel to Agra

Day 2 - visit the Fort and the Taj in the evening with overnight at Agra

Day 3 - travel back to Delhi to catch PM flight back to port

Highly doubtful that they will offer a Taj overland on that cruise. We did the exact same cruise with stop in Mangalore and Cochi and no overland was offered. You need a minimum of 3 days.

Thanks. What year did you take your cruise?

hi, we're on the RTW16 and they offered an overland to Taj with this exact same itinerary.

you leave directly from the ship in Male, Maldives with a non-O shuttle boat that takes you directly to the airport.

you return to Cochin and btw, they give you a nice little bus excursion there so that you don't feel like you missed the port.

I recommend highly the Taj overland and book as soon as they offer it. It was absolutely wonderful.

hi, we're on the RTW16 and they offered an overland to Taj with this exact same itinerary.

 

you leave directly from the ship in Male, Maldives with a non-O shuttle boat that takes you directly to the airport.

 

you return to Cochin and btw, they give you a nice little bus excursion there so that you don't feel like you missed the port.

 

I recommend highly the Taj overland and book as soon as they offer it. It was absolutely wonderful.

Thank you so much for responding. This trip is the last on my wife's Bucket List, and missing the Taj Mahal was going to be a deal breaker. :( I had already contacted our TA about canceling or postponing for a year to try to get an itinerary that would include it. Now we are good to go! :D BTW, I have now read your wonderful recounting of the trip on the "and so it begins...RTW16" thread, which will help prepare us for this adventure.

Thanks. What year did you take your cruise?

2012 was our Capetown to Sing Cruise. The Taj is worth it -- we just did the overland on Hong Kong to Athens. As suggested if they offer it grab it quickly as O limits it to around 36 person.

Well, from euphoria to depression. After seeing cbb's posting, I received an email from Oceania saying the excursion would not be offered on our cruise, so I called and spoke with a Special Services Coordinator who, in turn, called the Destinations Desk and discussed the issue. Apparently the excursion this year did not go very smoothly. Because Male is a tender port, getting the passengers to the airport was more difficult than they had expected. While they ultimately decided to go forward with it, to cbb's great benefit, they have definitively decided to discontinue Taj Mahal excursion from this itinerary. So PaulMCO's experience reflects the current plans. :(

Well, from euphoria to depression. After seeing cbb's posting, I received an email from Oceania saying the excursion would not be offered on our cruise, so I called and spoke with a Special Services Coordinator who, in turn, called the Destinations Desk and discussed the issue. Apparently the excursion this year did not go very smoothly. Because Male is a tender port, getting the passengers to the airport was more difficult than they had expected. While they ultimately decided to go forward with it, to cbb's great benefit, they have definitively decided to discontinue Taj Mahal excursion from this itinerary. So PaulMCO's experience reflects the current plans. :(

How disappointing for you. We're hoping the Taj excursion will be offered on the 2017 Dubai to Capetown cruise:confused:

Well, from euphoria to depression. After seeing cbb's posting, I received an email from Oceania saying the excursion would not be offered on our cruise, so I called and spoke with a Special Services Coordinator who, in turn, called the Destinations Desk and discussed the issue. Apparently the excursion this year did not go very smoothly. Because Male is a tender port, getting the passengers to the airport was more difficult than they had expected. While they ultimately decided to go forward with it, to cbb's great benefit, they have definitively decided to discontinue Taj Mahal excursion from this itinerary. So PaulMCO's experience reflects the current plans. :(

Fully understand your disappointment however, please let me try help solve your issue. We have over 400 nites on board cruise ships and have done several overnight excursions, none of which were thru the various cruise lines. Oceania itself is extremely expensive and overlands are no exception. It does take a bit of planning but, thru your Roll Call, you should be able to find about 10 or so others who also want to do the Taj. Break up the planning unless you can find a tour company that will customize your overland and see what you can get.

More than likely you can get yourself and a small number of others a much better tour and probably cut the price in half or less compared to the ships tour. Most recently we did Machu Pichu and a 3 nite South African Safari that was less than 50% of the cruise line price, included more days and even had an overnight at the Sanctuary at Machu Pichu Our tours were wonderful, took a bit of planning to have a Plan B if we were somehow delayed but, would never pay literally thousands of dollars more for a lesser experience with more people involved.

Now it the time to start planning and get your DW the last item on her bucket list. Start by finding a reputable tour operator and look at the O excursion for this year as a starting point and go from there. Good luck and have a great cruise. Sorry, don't have any contacts for the Taj but, do have ideas/contacts in other locales.

I'm so sorry about O not offering the Taj Mahal experience for you. We had no idea there was any problem as we thought it was extremely well organized and flowed smoothly.

I have a good friend on board who planned her excursion to the Taj privately at the same time we went. I would trust her advice completely.

I'll have Cathi write in and perhaps she can tell you exactly how to do it diy.

Cathi....are you reading this? c

just saw cathi at breakfast...she didn't go to taj this time; her independent tour was in a previous Nautica cruise and went very well, she said.

if you 2 can hook up online, she can tell you how she did it.

We've done lots of multi-day private tours, including Machu Pichu after a Celebrity Galapagos cruise and Iguazu Falls prior to a Princess cruise around the Horn of South America. But to try to do a multi-day private tour in the middle of a cruise is quite a different matter. First there's the issue of getting the cruise ship to agree to a multi-day absence from the cruise. Then there's the issue of what happens if there's a delayed return flight. I think we'll cancel this cruise and wait until the year following. We have other trips we can do in 2018 to fill the gap. But thanks for the sympathetic thoughts and offers of help nevertheless.

There are two cruises in April 2018, one will end and the other will start in Mumbai India. As an early booking perk, Oceania including "free" Taj Mahal experience promo - 3 days extensions to these cruises.

You might want to take a look.

i was going to suggest the exact same thing as osandomir....that would be a great way to start or end the cruise....no pressure to get to the ship if you were trying to do a DIY. O does a great job at the Taj I think.

I've also talked to Destination Services here on Insignia and they are going to try and find out if Taj is part of 2018 RTW.

Obviously they are doing well if they can keep up with the RTW16 that we're on, but they said they would try and find out something for me. They are awesome!!

I also talked to Jennifer who is the Ambassador and she said she'd shoot someone an email to see if it might be offered since that is info she might need in the future.

will keep you informed. Can't imagine why they wouldn't offer it; it is such a great selling point for so many people.

i was going to suggest the exact same thing as osandomir....that would be a great way to start or end the cruise....no pressure to get to the ship if you were trying to do a DIY. O does a great job at the Taj I think.

 

I've also talked to Destination Services here on Insignia and they are going to try and find out if Taj is part of 2018 RTW.

 

Obviously they are doing well if they can keep up with the RTW16 that we're on, but they said they would try and find out something for me. They are awesome!!

 

I also talked to Jennifer who is the Ambassador and she said she'd shoot someone an email to see if it might be offered since that is info she might need in the future.

 

will keep you informed. Can't imagine why they wouldn't offer it; it is such a great selling point for so many people.

WOW, you are a great help. Thank you. :) As for the other cruises, my wife really has her heart set on the Cape Town to Singapore itinerary. She wants to go to South Africa and Southeast Asia. So I'll be hoping you find something out about the availability on that segment of the world cruise. BTW, we cannot do 2017, we are already booked on a bucket list trip for both of us, Australia and New Zealand.

cbb told me about your dilemma with the Taj trip. And yes we did it but on a Hong Kong to Athens voyage. Did not do it this year on the RTW voyage.

And from what I've been told O is not going to do it on the 2018 trip. Don't know if that is true! things do change from time to time and I doubt O would turn down a money maker for them. You might try to see if it is offered on the voyages going the other way.

just received info from Destination Services on board Insignia. They checked with Miami and they said that they had NOT dropped Taj from the RTW18.

Further information: all of the comments handed in by passengers who went on RTW16 were that they were highly pleased with the trip and D.S said they had not had any real problems getting us from shuttle boat to airport.

Of course, situations change with regard to weather, politics, etc. but as of now, Taj in 2018 is a go.

When you call O, ask specifically to speak with the supervisor of Destination Services because sometimes the person answering the phone when you call, or when they transfer you to D.Services might not have the info you need.