Gloventure is the travel arm of Glovenexim LLP, working out of New Alipore in Kolkata. We plan and run small-group and private tours in two directions.
Across India: Kashmir and Ladakh, Himachal and Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Kerala and Goa, the seven states of the North East, Sikkim, Darjeeling and the Dooars, and the Andaman Islands.
Abroad: Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Bali and the rest of Southeast Asia; Bhutan, Nepal and the Maldives on our doorstep; Dubai and the Middle East; Japan and China; Egypt, Kenya and Mauritius; Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey; Europe and Switzerland; Australia, the Americas — and Iceland and the Arctic, if that is the trip you have in mind.
Every one of them is built directly with licensed ground handlers in the destination rather than resold from a package somebody else assembled. It is a slower way to make a holiday, and it is the reason we can tell you which hotel you are in, which road you are taking and why a particular day is arranged the way it is.
What a Gloventure tour actually is
A group departure is a fixed date with a small number of travellers, a private air-conditioned vehicle for the whole route, and the same English-speaking driver and guide from the first morning to the last. You are not on a fifty-seat coach with a rotating cast, and you are not being moved between three different local suppliers as you cross a border. Hotels are booked for every night, breakfast and dinner are included daily, and transfers, tolls, parking and the driver's own costs are already inside the price rather than appearing later.
A private tour is the same route on your dates, at your pace, with the hotels moved up or down and the itinerary reshaped around what you actually want. A good number of our bookings are exactly this: a family who liked the published route but wanted three nights at the beach instead of two, or a group of friends who wanted the tea country and none of the temples.
Why our fares exclude airfare
Our published prices are land packages. That is a deliberate choice, not an omission. An all-inclusive headline figure has to assume one departure city and one fare class, and most travellers end up paying something other than the assumed number — usually more, occasionally less, rarely the same. We quote your flights live from your own city at the time of booking and put them on the invoice if you want us to, so the figure you see is the fare for your seat on your date rather than an average of someone else's.
The same principle runs through the rest of the pricing. Entrance fees, optional activities and their costs are printed on the tour page. GST applies at the statutory rate, and TCS on overseas packages is collected under Section 206C(1G) and is creditable against your own income tax — it is a tax deposited against your PAN, not a fee we keep.
Visas, documents and the part nobody enjoys
We assist with visa documentation, checklists and appointments, and on several destinations with the e-visa or ETA itself. What we will not do is imply that we can influence the outcome. Visas are granted at the discretion of the consulate, processing fees are non-refundable either way, and — this is the one worth reading twice — a refusal does not release a booking from its cancellation charges, because the hotels and airlines holding your booking are unaffected by it. Travel insurance bought at the time of your first payment is what covers that gap, and we say so before you book rather than afterwards.
What it costs to cancel
Plainly, because most operators put this where nobody reads it: cancellation charges plus an administration fee run from a minimum of 25% to a maximum of 100% of the tour cost, depending on when written cancellation reaches us and on the terms of the airlines, hotels and ground operators involved. Inside 72 hours of departure it is 100%. The band that applies to your particular booking is confirmed to you in writing when you book, so the numbers are yours before you pay, not after. Where a refund is due it takes 21 to 90 working days, because that is how long suppliers take to release the money to us.
Who we are probably not right for
If you want the cheapest possible seat on the largest possible coach, there are operators who do that at a scale we cannot match, and they are a better fit. If you want an itinerary nobody answers the phone about at eleven at night in a different time zone, likewise. What we are good at is the trip somebody has actually thought about: the right number of nights in each place, a vehicle that is yours, a guide who is with you all week, and a person in Kolkata who knows your booking by name when you call.
Where to start
Look at the current group departures above, or tell us the shape of the trip you have in mind — where, roughly when, how many of you, and what you want the holiday to feel like. We will come back with a written quotation covering dates, hotels, room configuration and exactly what is and is not included. There is no obligation in a quotation and it costs nothing to ask.
