Travel Questions, answered honestly.

Mostly for couples and small groups, often seniors or retirees, who would rather spend three or four days getting to know one city than rush through five. If you are curious about a place rather than just collecting it, value a private guide who can answer the questions you actually have, and prefer a comfortable, unhurried pace, our journeys are built with you in mind. We also offer short duration walking and group tours in some destinations.

Very much so. A curated journey is not a group tour. You travel with your own guide and driver, on your own schedule, seeing what interests you rather than following a fixed route with strangers. Many of our travellers think of themselves as independent and simply want the planning, the access, and the local knowledge taken care of.

Our curated journeys and longer trips are probably not ... and we would rather say so plainly than waste your time. We design private and small group journeys with private guides, drivers, and considered accommodation, which sits at a different price point and pace to hostel-hopping. Having said that, we do offer a careful selection of short duration tours for those who prefer a more budget-friendly option.

Families, friends travelling together, and larger groups are all welcome. The model does not change, guides, vehicles, and pacing are simply scaled to suit the size and makeup of your party, and the itinerary is still built around what your group wants to see and do.

If the idea of three or four unhurried days in one city, with a private guide and a driver who knows the back roads as well as the highlights, sounds appealing, you are likely in the right place. If you are drawn to ticking off as many countries as possible in the shortest time, a different kind of trip will probably suit you better, and that is a perfectly reasonable thing to want.

A travel agent sells you what is convenient to package, and a tour operator puts you on a fixed group departure with a set itinerary and a set price. A curator starts with you. We ask where you want to go, what you are curious about, the pace that suits you, and the kind of places where you would feel at home at the end of a long day, then design the journey around those answers and look after every moving part. You can read a longer explanation of what a curated tour actually is on our journal.

Mainly judgement and access. Anyone can book a hotel and a city tour online. What is harder to find on your own is a guide who has been chosen for their reputation and experience rather than assigned at random, a route that reflects someone’s honest opinion about the best way to see a region, and a single point of contact who is looking after the whole trip rather than one booking at a time. That is what a curator adds. This story from Nepal shows what that can look like in practice.

The itineraries published on this site are starting points, not fixed packages. They reflect Mano’s own judgement about a sensible, well-paced way to see a region, but every detail, from the route to the hotels to the people who will guide you, can be adjusted once we understand what you are looking for. You receive a tailored itinerary, not a template pulled off a shelf.

Every journey on this site is personally curated by Mano Chandra Dhas, who founded Coromandel Tours in Bogotá in 2013 and has more than fifty years in travel. Curation is the heart of what he does: rather than mass-producing routes, he chooses each tour from the many available in a region and keeps only the ones he would happily recommend to a friend. In Bogotá, his home city, that comes from a lifetime of first-hand knowledge. In India, he has paid for and travelled several of the tours himself. Elsewhere, he reads deeply and works only with established local operators he has personally vetted, so that what reaches you has already passed his eye. You can read more about him on the page about Mano.

Both, and either is entirely normal. Plenty of travellers start from a published itinerary and adjust the pace, swap a city, or extend a stay. Others come to us with nothing more than a destination in mind and a sense of what they enjoy, and we build the route from there. The starting point matters far less than getting the finished trip right for you.

Mano personally selects the partner operators in each destination based on their reputation and experience, and holds them to an exacting standard before any of their guides or drivers are put in front of a client. Every tour offered on this site has been built on that basis.

It is a real, established company. Coromandel Tours is the leisure travel arm of Coromandel SAS, registered in Bogotá, Colombia, and was founded by Mano Chandra Dhas in 2013. With a career spanning more than fifty years in the travel industry, including thirty-five years based in the Persian Gulf, he has a wealth of experience and knowledge to draw on. You are welcome to look into the company and the person behind it before you ever send an enquiry.

You are never left to deal with an unfamiliar operator on your own. Your trip is delivered by local partners under arrangements we have made on your behalf, and we remain your single point of contact throughout. If something needs sorting out, it comes to us, and we can reach the right person with the operator quickly to arrange a fair solution. Some things, of course, are beyond anyone’s control, such as a strike in Peru or severe weather in the Himalayas. Where that happens, the usual answer is a substitute of equal interest, though there are limits to what any substitute can replace: if Machu Picchu is closed, for instance, it is closed. For events of this kind we ask every traveller to read the booking terms carefully and to travel with comprehensive insurance.

Yes. Anything you submit through our enquiry form is handled in line with our Privacy Policy, which sets out plainly what we collect, why, and how it is kept.

Every trip is different, so the specific deposit, payment, and cancellation terms for your journey are set out clearly in your recommended itinerary and booking confirmation before you commit to anything. Nothing is left to be discovered later. If your circumstances change, talk to us; we would always rather have that conversation early than leave you guessing.

Those are exactly the frustrations a curated trip is designed to remove. Many of our tours are arranged exclusively for you, with the freedom to linger, skip, or change course as the day suggests. In some cities a tour may be shared with a small number of other travellers to make it worthwhile to run, but you are always in the hands of experienced guides chosen for the way they work, and properly trained ones at that; in Colombia, for example, a guide spends several years at university before they can qualify. If you would prefer an exclusive guide throughout, that can be arranged almost anywhere, though it comes at a higher price. There is no rotating roster of guides who do not know your name, and no obligation to move at someone else’s pace.

It is one of the things it does best. We can craft an experience that is as private or as public as you want. A private guide who knows a place well can take you past the obvious sights to the corners, conversations, and small details that a forty-person group never gets near. The pace is yours, the questions are yours to ask, and the day can bend toward whatever has caught your interest, rather than a script written for the lowest common denominator.

Tell us before we finalise anything, and we will shape the trip around it. That might mean adjusting a route to avoid long walks or high altitude, briefing your guide on dietary requirements in advance, or simply choosing accommodation and pacing that suit you better. The earlier we know, the more options we have.

Millions of people travel safely to Colombia, Peru, India, and Nepal every year, and each has well-established routes for visitors. As with any international travel, it is sensible to check your government’s current travel advice for the specific regions you plan to visit, take care with the ordinary precautions any city calls for, and travel with comprehensive insurance. On the ground, you are met and accompanied by guides and drivers who know the area, which removes a great deal of the uncertainty that solo travel can carry.

Colombia, Peru, India, and Nepal. Colombia is our home base; Peru centres on Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu; India spans routes from the Golden Triangle to Kashmir, Kerala, and the eastern Himalayas; and Nepal covers the Kathmandu Valley, extended circuits, and Himalayan treks. The Persian Gulf, where Mano lived and worked for thirty-five years, as well as other destinations will be added in time.

It runs in four stages. First, you tell us where you are thinking of going, what you are curious about, and the pace you prefer. Second, we put together a recommended itinerary built around that brief, not a template. Third, you take your time refining it, swapping things in and out, asking questions, until you accept it. Fourth, once payment is received, we arrange everything, guides, transport, hotels, transfers, and the small details in between, so that you simply arrive, are met, and travel.

As early as you comfortably can, particularly if your dates fall in a popular season or you have a specific period in mind, since the best guides, drivers, and accommodation can be in demand. That said, we are also able to work with shorter timeframes when needed. The honest answer is that an early conversation gives us more room to get things right for you, but it is always worth asking, whatever your timeline.

A confirmed itinerary generally includes your guides, ground transport, accommodation, and the experiences and entrance fees that form part of the route, all coordinated on your behalf. International flights, visas, travel insurance, personal spending, and items outside the agreed itinerary are not included as standard. The exact inclusions and exclusions for your specific trip are always set out clearly in your recommended itinerary, so there is nothing to guess at.

We are glad to share general guidance where we can, but these remain your responsibility. You will need to hold a valid passport, arrange any visas your trip requires, meet relevant health and vaccination requirements, and travel with comprehensive insurance covering medical care, emergency evacuation, and cancellation. Requirements can change at short notice, so it is worth checking official sources close to your travel dates rather than relying on what was true when you first looked into it.

No. Reaching out starts a conversation, nothing more. You can ask questions, explore ideas, request changes to a recommended itinerary, or simply see what a trip might look like, all without any obligation. A trip is only confirmed once you accept a recommended itinerary and we issue a booking confirmation.

No. We expect questions, second thoughts, and changes of heart, and we would rather you took the time to get a recommended itinerary right than rush into one that does not fit. There are no countdown timers, no "limited spaces" tactics, and no pushed upgrades. If something in a recommended itinerary does not feel like you, say so, and we will change it.

That is completely fine, and no hard feelings either way. Not every traveller is looking for the same kind of trip, and we would rather you walked away with a clear sense of whether this fits than felt talked into something that does not. If it turns out we are not the right match, we hope you find a trip elsewhere that suits you exactly.