Turkey Encompassed: 15 Days from Istanbul

Excellent & thoroughly enjoyable 2-week tour, Turkey Encompassed.

This trip exceeded all my expectations. The small group was perfect, we were able to bypass lines, keep together as a group, or easily met up and explored on our own. I was very lucky to be placed with a charming young woman as my roomie. Our driver Abraham was amazing, he was probably the best driver and though some roads were quite tricky, he handled them with ease. We had 2 guides, both of whom were excellent. John, our first ( for the first 5 days ) was extremely knowledgeable, charming, resourceful and funny, unfortunately he developed a some kind of bug and felt he could not complete the tour, without compromising our trip. He was able to find a remarkable substitute, ~Ahmet Berke Topaloğlu. Berke, was challenged with stepping into some very big shoes, holy smokes he excelled. Berke was knowledgeable with attention to detail. He admitted he was still working on his English skills, yet within those 2 weeks him command of the language improved significantly. He too was absolutely charming, friendly and sincerely passionate, looking into all our needs and concerns. He even took us to his Moms house for tea and he play a traditional Turkish instrument! I highly recommend this Intrepid Tour., I’m already planning my next!

Very good guide: helping, knowledgeable and guidance every day.

Lots of places to see on this tour, and some real bucket list moments. Our guide, Lev, was sensational. He went above and beyond. Feels like intrepid as a company really cares and their tour was well thought out. Be prepared for many long days of driving, however it’s just a part of covering so many kms. Very comfortable bus to travel in though. Gallipoli and the boat trip in Kas were highlights.

### Logistical nightmare and boring stories ### I rarely bother with writing bad reviews because I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. But this is one of the worst purchase experiences in my 40 year life, so I hope this information can be helpful to you and keep you from a regretful purchase. For a little context, we had 5 people on this tour. Two in their late 20s, one in their 30s and two in their 40s. The tour-mates made the tour bearable, but the tour itself was a disaster. Let me list the ways this tour not only fell below expectations, but ruined an otherwise wonderful stay in a country full of warm people. 1. **We did not have a tour leader.** Most tours have a tour leader who manages the logistics and a local guide who walk you through the sites. This tour tries to save money by making one person do both. This means the logistics was a nightmare, and no one took care of the tour people. Let me elaborate. 2. **Time estimates are all over the place.** We stopped at Troy and he said we will be there for 45 min. He started telling us historical facts in a boring way for 30 min, then we finally took a walk together and we didn’t exit until 1.5 hours later, that’s 2x the predicted time. This happened again at Ephesus, with an estimate of 3 hours without no bathroom access, in the raw 40C heat with no shade, and then it became 4 hours with such conditions. Keep in mind that the guide has been to this site at least 100 times already. To be this far off is appalling. Lunch times are unpredictable, so one day it’s at noon and the next day it’s at 3pm. And there’s no warning, so luckily we did not have diabetics on the tour. If we’re at a site, and someone wants to branch off and meet the group at the exit, the guide cannot give an estimate of when we will be back on the bus again. We were only 5 in the group, and it’s already chaos. I can’t imagine if it’s 10 or 12 people. I’ve never seen a tour managed so poorly. 3. **The guide did not care about the health of the group.** I understand the the guide is not the tour doctor, but it’s really basic human decency to check in, especially as a leader. Every person had tummy problems once or more during the trip. And people will say so out loud too, and obviously looked unwell at meals. But he never asked about it, or checked in on anyone afterwards. He never offered to go to restaurants to help a person get the right food for them to recover or to stop at a pharmacy. Instead, we were checking on each other to make sure everyone was ok, because that’s basic human decency in a group. For all the talk of “hospitality” in the Turkish culture, I am amazed at this lack of care. 4. **The stories are boring, we Google’d the info instead.** When you get only one local guide for two weeks and you get a great one, awesome. But if you get a bad one, prepared to be bored out of your mind. This guy had credentials. Graduated four years from guiding school in Turkey and 15 years of actual guiding experience. But man, the stories, if you can even call them that, are boring. Lists of dates and facts is not a story. A 2 min story takes 30 minutes to tell. You might as well watch a YouTube video instead and learn more. An interesting aside, when the tour started, we had a kick-off meeting at the hotel. The travel company’s branch manager was there along with the guide to observe the kick-off meeting. The manager told us this tour guide is “one of their best.” Oh my. If this is the best they have then you have no hope of getting a good tour guide with this company my friend. Stay away. 5. **You get no information, logistically speaking.** This is the kicker. We booked a tour so we didn’t have to research what’s around the corner. The point of a guide is to guide you. To give you heads-up about where we’re visiting, how long it’ll be, where the good picture spot is, on-site conditions so you can be prepared for rough terrain, heat etc. you get the idea. But no. Nothing. In fact, I had to ask every-single-day for even the basic itinerary the next day. There was one day in Cappadokia when the guide took us for a one hour walk near the rock formations. The “walk” turned out to be a real bush-wacking experience, scaling slippery gravel, dropping into dry river beds between small canyon rocks, and exposed to bare sun in 100F heat for the entire “walk”. I would at least call that a hike and tell people to put on hiking shoes. I actually had hiking shoes that stayed useless in my suitcase while I scaled the steep gravel in unsuitable footwear. Luckily nobody got hurt. But this tour is rated for any age, as in a 65 year old can join, and I don’t know what could’ve happened then. It was a one-way walk so there was no turning back either. 6. Hotels are below grade. They booked us in $25 a night (for two) hotels that smell like cigarette smoke, when we paid $250 a night (for two) for this tour. There were 3 nights like this out of 14. We know because we checked prices on some of these hotel rooms. Yes we know that our rate includes the bus, the guide and some of the entrance fees. Taking into account the company’s margins it should still leave at least $150 a night to book us a decent room. So instead of enjoying a good night’s sleep I was taking allergy pills and wearing masks to get through the night. This is not ok. Stay away from this tour company or you’ll regret it.

I had high expectations but the effective tour was above those expectations. Excellent selection of the places to be visited, excellent selection of the accomodation, excellent guide / leader of the group, excellent transportation, excellent mix of history, culture, exploration, entertainment and relaxation.

Fantastic tour and guide! Turkey is amazing and the tour is fast paced.

Great guide, who was very caring & helpful/resourceful. Great drivers, who handled unexpected issues well. Really enjoyed the tour, with the small group size & emphasis on meeting local people. A bit too much uninterrupted driving time... the initial travel day was nicely broken up with things to see along the way, but most of the other days had long drives with only stops for bathroom/food, but no sightseeing along the way, which made for long days.

Tour guide extremely well informed and organised. I felt completely safe at all times. The places visited were exactly what I was expecting. In fact expectations were exceeded.

The trips i have done with Intrepid have been well organised.Excellent tour leaders and guides.Good sized groups, not too big or small. Mixed nationalities.