Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Air India, despite its quite recent privatisation, is simply awful in every way. I was at Gatwick for 11 hours , with zero information about what was happening. Apparently the previous two Air India flights to Kochi were cancelled. All very stressful, but no fault of DAF!
There is a great deal of reassurance in knowing that your trip has been arranged by people who really know what they are doing. And that you are not just abandoned to the anonymous machinery of an airline that doesn't really care, in spite of all their rubbish claims about caring! Also that if something goes wrong you can get advice with a telephone call that is actually answered!
Although my baggage was lost from Dubai to London Gatwick I was able to speak to DialAFlight and ask for guidance on how to process the forms to reclaim my baggage. This they did readily which was a comfort at the time. You'll be glad to hear I now have my lost baggage!
Archie was brilliant - sorted everything out. Will definitely be using you guys and recommending to friends
Great service, especially from Ray Taylor.
Zoe Lane is an excellent travel agent.
It's not until something goes wrong with your travel plans that you realise the benefits of booking with them. After sitting on the plane at Gatwick for a couple of hours our flight was cancelled due to a technical issue. At 11pm there aren't that many people in the airport to help. Fortunately a call to DialAFlight's emergency phone line had me talking to Korinna within seconds. She was able to see there were no flights from Gatwick the following morning but there were spaces on the Heathrow flight and she changed our booking to this flight. She also re-arranged our connecting flight for Dubai to Delhi. All this whilst my husband was trying to talk to the airline's customer call centre who were saying they couldn't do anything as the flight hadn't been officially cancelled! A big thanks to Korinna for her help.
Efficient and helpful
No hitches on the way despite the potential for this to happen. Radisson Blue Hotel in Connaught Place excellent service and very convenient for shopping and restaurants.
Always very helpful and a pleasure to book with.
Other than the changes with the flights everything else was great
Amazing customer care
Excellent service
None. Good service
Alfie was very helpful, as usual and ensured all went smoothly
You didn't have to rearrange a flight home for me after a last minute international flight cancellation on this holiday, as you did on the last, but it was so good to know that - far from home - you were there to help me should I find myself stranded. Thank you so much for being there.
Excellent service and they were there for me when I needed assistance. Will definitely use again.
Always had good customer service from Michelle
Flight suggestions worked really well
All perfect!
Everything was handled promptly, professionally and it delivered an experience in India that was everything we hoped for. Great to have a team that were readily available to support us in both the planning and execution! Particular call-out for Brody Letchfield who was our main contact and ensured that, through liaison with Tamarind Global on the ground in India, everything ran smoothly
Connecting flight from Heathrow was delayed because of fog in Delhi, causing us to miss the connection to Goa. Seven hour wait for the next flight.
Great service yet again
Brody once again has provided excellent service and planned our holiday to perfection
Edward Scudder is a star - above and beyond. Quality service
Absolutely seamless holiday to Goa with all the flights booked with Rosie at DialAFlight Thanks again
As always, excellent service especially by Gino. If only BA could learn a thing or two from you about customer service.
Raphael was very helpful throughout the entire process, from initial booking to just before departure
Aiden is great and always most helpful as are all your team!
Thank you for your attentive services
Black sky erupts into brilliant purple, white and electric blue. The air is thick with the stench of wet mud and pollen. Huge bullets of hot rain graze our skin and hammer the open-top Land Rover as we wrestle our way through sodden dirt tracks.
'Welcome to Africa,' our guide Bongani laughs, with one hand on the wheel and a torch in the other. 'Big cats love the rain, it's the perfect camouflage.'
An hour ago it was a baking 35c (95f).
Now the herds of zebra, nyala, impala, buffalo, kudu, waterbuck - and more - that dozed in the muggy evening have all scampered for shelter.
As we reach the only stretch of Tarmac for miles around, a pungent smell of oil rises from the road. Slick tar steams in the headlights and, up above, the night continues to jolt itself awake.
Then we screech to a stop. Two baby elephants galumph into the road ahead, followed swiftly by rather angry-looking parents waving their trunks at us.
'We have to keep moving, the rain's distressed them,' Bongani shouts.
Back in my room - a sleek concrete construction perched on stilts off the edge of a rocky incline overlooking the Luvuvhu river - the thunder relaxes outside and the hymnic buzz of cicadas returns.
Yesterday I was in chilly North London.
Now I'm a two-hour drive from any notable civilisation with no phone signal, let alone Wi-Fi. I sleep like a log.
The Outpost is one of just two lodges in Pafuri, a 65,000-acre area of private bushland and the uppermost section of South Africa's Kruger National Park.
We're at the very north of the country here, away from the touristy bustle of the main park further south. Down there you can safely expect the 'Big Five in one drive'. But what you forgo in copious game sightings in Pafuri, you get back in the most gorgeous solitude.
The weather is almost tropical; and with that comes some of the richest and most varied wildlife in the country.
Pafuri makes up less than two per cent of the wider Kruger bush, yet it contains a staggering 80 per cent of the region's bio-diversity, including some 350 species of rare birds.
Red hornbills (or Zazu from the Lion King), bright-blue Meves's starlings, green Tarzan pigeons and purple rollers swirl past. 'Did you see that shadow overhead?' I ask.
'A black eagle,' Bongani says, barely looking up.
'And that alarm-like call?' A tropical boubou. 'And that chirping in the distance?'
'That's a zebra, Henry'.
Life quickly shifts here; it's dinner by candlelight out on the veranda of the main lodge soon after sunset and - freed from emails, social media and box-set binges - it's early to bed before an even earlier start.
Suddenly I'm a 'morning person', jumping up at 5am to gawk on the balcony at the cinematic scene unfolding in 4D: orangey-pink deliciousness bursting over misty grasslands and fat baobab trees.
The Outpost offers two drives a day, one at dawn and one into nightfall, with time in between to swim at the lodge's pool or indulge in a spa treatment.
The room achieves the desired indoor-outdoor but not really too outdoor blend.
All that separates you from the elements is canvas and a mosquito net. But the free-standing bath and other hotel finishes are welcome luxuries.
Trucks loaded with freezers bring in weekly deliveries of dragon fruit, venison steak, rainbow trout and rabbit. And I find it surprisingly easy to slip into the routine of coffee and muffins first thing, followed by breakfast, lunch, high tea and a three-course dinner.
My drive companions for the stay, British couple Simon and Sarah, visited four years ago and have returned for a 30th birthday.
One day, gathered at the top of Lanner Gorge for a sundown gin and tonic, Simon gets down on one knee and proposes.
Of course, Sarah accepts (how could she not!) and we toast them with champagne.
Before apartheid, Pafuri was home to the Makulekes. A 1969 government edict saw the land forcibly taken and its people displaced. But when the area was returned to rightful ownership in 1996, the community chose not to go back, instead renting it to lodges which almost exclusively hire staff, like Bongani, of Makuleke heritage.
Our drives, therefore, are punctuated by countless lessons: that wild sage is rubbed on the skin as an insect repellent. That leopard urine smells like popcorn. That the call of blacksmith lapwings sounds like the clank of a hammer on metal.
And that lala palms from Zimbabwe are so called because their sap can be brewed into a highly intoxicating drink ('lala' means 'to sleep').
This is Bongani's home; and ours to enjoy for a brief - but dazzling - time only.
First published in the Daily Mail - February 2023
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