Time to hit the road
How often do we go to a traditional tour operator these days for holidays within the country? Hardly ever. With almost every cell phone being GPRS-enabled and vehicle service stations dotting the highways, all one needs to do is pack, get into a car and drive.
Siddhartha Sen, a Delhi-based professional and an avid traveller, says he steers clear of spoon-fed conducted tours. Sen prefers to hit the road by himself. “It is generally on a Royal Enfield or an SUV. A self-drive tour gives you the freedom to check out a place better, at your own time and within your budget too,” says Sen who has driven to Ladakh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand.
Road trips are clearly the trendy thing to do and organised self-drive tours are already popular with adventurous clients, with second or third time travellers picking them over first timers. Different from other tours where everything is pre-planned, only the origin and destination are known on such tours and the stopovers and routes are completely up to the driver. “Trips typically involve 4x4 SUVs and clients are guided through terrain ranging from sand dunes, dry river beds, forests, dirt tracks to high altitude deserts,” says Akshay Kumar, CEO, Mercury Himalayan Explorations Ltd.
From just renting a car within a city or driving cross-country in a camper caravan, all the options are possible using self-drive vehicles. “The concept is a huge craze internationally and though not so developed in India currently — with poor infrastructure and road sense — the self-drive travel scenario has got better with service providers like Hertz, Avis, Budget, Alamo, etc., offering dedicated self-drive packages,” says Subhash Goyal, Chairman, STIC Travel Group and Chair-man, ASSOCHAM-Expert Committee on Tourism.
Packages include door-to-door service with a pick-up from the airport, hotel bookings, car rentals, insurance, mechanic back-up, wireless connectivity in each car, an experienced 4x4 guide etc. “We have designed a customisable holiday package, starting at `27,000 per person, called self-drive holidays in partnership with Yatra.com. We had initially introduced this in Thailand with Thailand Tourism and then in Europe. The programme is doing well in India with designated vehicles being booked two months in advance. People have been taking the cars to Goa, Pune, Jaipur, Shimla and Ooty among other places,” says Sunil Gupta, CEO, Avis India.
“Today, we have an overall fleet of about 1400 cars, of which 15 per cent are dedicated self-drive vehicles.The fleet, which once consisted of only Tata Safaris, now includes models such as Ford Endeavour and Mitsubishi Pajero,” says Gupta, talking about the choices available.
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