Traveler’s Feedback

Dear Tatev
What a trip you had organised for me! It was just amazing!! I haven’t had a chance to write anything for the pages you mentioned but I shall eventually. I would like to share privately that Armenia was one of the best tours I have ever taken!
The sites I saw and experienced were truly fascinating and my guide, while he cursed the roads a lot, was exceptional with his knowledge and keen desire to show me as much as he could - even sites that were not included in the itinerary but he knew of personally. We even explored sites that he had heard about but not yet explored personally. Unfortunately, the site was up a very, very steep mountain gorge and his estimate of just a few metres was not quite accurate. For me it was an exhausting 10-kilometre climb (Well I exaggerate, but it felt like it to me :-) ) It was probably only a kilometre climb.
He even helped me to purchase some local tomato seeds at a market which I have now planted in my garden and am hoping they grow well here in Australia.
He wasn’t keen though at hosting me back to Armenia to see the Pagan festival in August conducted by a local Pagan and Arts teacher where people dance naked around a fire near the monolith site. He laughed at the idea. :-)
My time in Armenia has left me with many vivid and wonderful memories. It was the perfect tour for me the only disappointment was not seeing the petroglyphs but I understand the reason this was cancelled. I shall just have to come back during Summer to see them.
Georgia was nice but I found too many sites had been reconstructed and served as marriage venues and rebuilt more for this purpose than for a historical one. There was nothing in Georgia that fascinated me as much as the sites I explored in Armenia. I even cancelled many of the places we were to visit because they were just too touristy for my liking and interests. The guide was excellent though and I highly recommend her for all that she did for me.
Armenia - Beautiful scenery, and wonderful, mystical and even mysterious sites, with an excellent guide, made a tour I shall always remember.
Again, thank you and all involved in making my tour such a memorable one!

Kindest regards,
Mark

All aspects of the trip were great. I enjoyed having Lusine as my guide for Armenia as I felt she was well informed and offered great insight to old and modern Armenia. The tour guide for Georgia was well informed as well and I felt we had a good thorough experience in seeing the vast areas of Georgia. Azerbaijan was eventful in that the tour guide did show us the difference between east and west Azerbaijan. I felt socially he was inappropriate at times. I'm not sure if he had bad intentions or it was a case of a culture clash. Overall I would recommend this tour to others.

Dear Tatev, yes, we enjoyed our trip very much and are full of interesting, nice and friendly impressions and encounters, in particular your invitation to your office and your friendly greeting. It was important for me, to get to know you personally after all the writing, planing, your advices and organisation, findig a good guide in person of Ani Avunts and Robert, the driver. We all enjoyed your and their accompaniment every day during our trip and while visiting all the interesting places and are very grateful for all the support. Ani allways was informed or tryed to find out what should interest us too during our dayly trips. We all together had a lot of laughing during all the days and a warm community. Robert impressed me with his professional driving; driving around the holes in the road, driving fast where possible, driving carefully where it was necessary and his never ending service during our getting in and out of the car. Hope, it's possible to come to Armenia again. In this case i wouldn't hesitate, to contact you again. It would be a pleasure for me to organise such a trip with your support again. Hopefully we will have Ani and Robert again too

All well organized, excellent and knowledgeable guides. Only bad thing was Tbilisi hotel location, near football stadium. Hotel itself was fine but location is poor, Few restaurants and a long way from old Tiblisi. You should not put tourists in this location. Hotel Yerevan excellent hotel and location. And thank you for organizing everything I appreciated your excellent communications.

Hello Tatev!!!
Sorry so late in responding, but when on vacation I don’t access my email from my phone, so just saw this. I got home late last evening. The trip was fantastic and one I’ll remember forever. Both guides were incredible and I’m now Facebook friends with both Arthur and Tazo. I would be happy to provide a review or feedback if you wish on the trip. I cannot say enough nice things about Arara and the guides and of course both countries, which were phenomenal and hopefully more people from the USA will also discover the wonders of Armenia and Georgia. I think the time you suggested and booked in both countries was about right percentage wise with more to Georgia. I of course loved the mountains particularly in Georgia with the Caucuses the most impressive. But seeing Mt. Ararat was a thrill and I could not believe how beautiful Armenia was as well. I think the time of year was perfect, although around Mestia it was a bit snowy and one suggested drive in the itinerary was not available due to snow, but Tazo had another great alternative. I think 15 days was the bare minimum and of course I didn’t see close to everything, but I think I now have a good perspective of both countries. I think you did a great job of balancing, cultural, religious, city and landscape scenery so I had a good mix of all that. I took 1,330 pictures, which I will begin editing and hopefully will complete in the next 3 weeks and have about 400-500 uploaded to my SmugMug photo web site – URL below my signature line below.

I hope to be able to come back at some point and spend a little more time and relax a bit. I was really on the go, which was by plan. I did one incredible thing in Yerevan I wanted to mention, that was not planned at all nor could it have been. On the plane from Paris to Yerevan, I sat next to the Director of the Opera – Constantin Orbfilian. You may know of him. He is obviously well know in Armenia at high levels of the political world in Armenia, and throughout the Opera world including in the USA – he’s a dual citizen. He invited me to the April 25 showing of the opera Annoush and to sit in the Directors box with him. Also the US Ambassador Chief of Public Affairs was there as well as the Armenian Cultural Minister (may not have his title correct), so we all sat together, enjoyed wine and cheese in Constantin’s office during intermissions and talked about many cultural topics impacting Armenia and I was fascinated. A great evening. BTW, the opera was incredible, and if you haven’t seen it, please do at the next showing if there is one.

Better go now, since I’m busy getting caught up after being gone so long. Feel free to drop me a line anytime if you have any questions or want any details about my perspective of the trip or a review.

Thanks again for everything, and I hope we will be in touch again for another trip in the future.


All the best,

Regards,

Gary's travels - https://garygoodnow.smugmug.com

Thank you for the great experience in Armenia, and the help in arranging tours! Rima, the tour coordinator was extremely responsive, and flexible regarding all the requests. The only misunderstanding was regarding the bus tours - I thought they would be small group tours, but they turned out to be big groups. But everything was very well organized, both on Arara's side and on the partner tour operator's side.
As for the individual tours: the driver (Raffi) and the guide (Eva) were just amazing, most reliable, kind and attentive. Those days were just perfect!
The hotel was OK, perfectly clean, with very polite and nice hotel staff, but the rooms are not soundproof, so it is difficult to sleep as you hear almost everything from the neighboring rooms and corridors. But the location was perfect!
Overall - very good experience, thanks a lot!

My passengers in Georgia/Armenia are very happy. Sharing a message I just received from them - Hi! If you haven't visit Tbilisi and Yerevan I think you should do it soon. Our tour guides both in Tbilisi and Yerevan are highly commendable we enjoyed our stay in Tbilisi that it should have longer and shorter in Yerevan. 7 days in Tbilisi and 3 days in Yerevan would have been perfect. Food is so inexpensive !!! Oh our hotel in Yerevan Paris hotel is centrally located and rooms are big. Hotel in Tbilisi could be better. If only there are direct flights from Manila it would be nice to come back here especially Tbilisi.

Hello Gohar!

The trip was awesome. Attractions were great, weather was nice and we enjoyed having lunches in traditional Armenia’s houses. This added more to our vacation. Definitely will recommend your company to my friends and colleagues, and I already did! Also special thanks to our awesome guider. She was very friendly and I enjoyed her stories and knowledge I got from her. Also our driver was great, patient and understanding as my mum kept talking with him in Arabic

Thanks Ms Rima,

We had wonderful time in Armenia,the tour plan was good, and we were very happy with Mr Avet the guide cum driver.He was very knowledgeable easy to talk to and punctual. In fact he knows old history too. I do contribute to trip advisor and will do so in next few days.

Regards,

Patwardhan

Dear Lusine! I have been back in Australia for a few weeks, but wish to thank you for a wonderful trip with Arara Tours. When I booked I just wanted something different to finish off a visit to Italy and the UK. As it turned out visiting Armenia and Georgia was the highlight of my travels and I hope to come again.

I was impressed with the flexibility of your arrangements so that you could arrange a trip with only 3 others on short notice. Everything seemed to go right. The minibuses were comfortable, drivers/guides excellent, wonderful food, stunning scenery (we did have good weather) and hotels fine. I enjoyed the free time in Yerevan and even managed a trip to the Opera. And the other passengers were great fun.  I would be happy for you to use my name in any testimonial.

I would not try to tell your company how to run its business, and especially as it seems to be doing it so well. But just one thing that would have helped was an itinerary, even if just a few pages with a map, no need for photos, so you could see where you were going each day.  Or perhaps there was one that I missed downloading.

Thanks for your offer of assistance with travel and accommodation before and after the tour. My arrangements worked out, but the bus from Trabzon to Bitumi and especially from the border was challenging, and don't arrive in Bitumi at 11 pm and not know where the hotel is. Also the minibus from Tblisi to Yerevan was interesting.

It seems lots of people I know in Australia want to travel to Georgia, it seems to have the advertising edge, so I have been praising the delights of Armenia. There is actually quite an awareness here of the country, many people, especially in public life, have Armenian origins. 

I have given your email address to a number of friends keen to do the same trip as me. Plus, I am looking at returning for a trip into Iran next year with a friend and would be interested in any information you can provide.

Thanks again.

Hello Nune!
Just a short note to say that we enjoyed our time in the Caucasus very much and wished we had had a few more days.  The hotels you selected in Hagpat and Gori were both very comfortable and the staff helpful.   In Hagpat we appreciated that they allowed us to have breakfast at 8 AM when it is not normally served until 9 which helped us to see some additional sights.
All 3 of our guides Ruslan, Avet and Vazha were terrific, flexible (as we changed our plans a little on some days) and very thoughtful.  We spent the most time with Vazha and we appreciated the many small touches that he brought to that part of the trip.  
As you know we had to cancel the night in Kazbegi due to the weather and road conditions but that turned out quite nicely as we still saw the mountains and gained an extra day in Tbilisi. 
Finally, I had been concerned that coming over the holiday period things would be a bit quiet but in fact, they were very lively and enjoyable in all locations with the lovely Christmas decorations everywhere.
I might mention also the experience on the train if you are booking for others.  The train itself was very comfortable but for us, not used to the hot temperatures that people like to heat their houses in Europe, the train was too hot for sleeping which meant we were more tired than expected when we arrived in Tbilisi.
Please pass on our thanks and good wishes to all 3 of our guides and to the 2 hotels and thanks again to you for making the arrangements in such a professional manner.

Regards,
Cathy