We are seasoned India experts who have come together to offer you Harji’s India - on a journey that takes you beyond the tourist trail - an experience of the land that is authentic and your own, on a trip created just for you.
Unlike many other tour operators, we have our own ground handling team and office in India, giving us better control over operations, as well as superior tour knowledge and (importantly) lower costs.
Our founder Harji has vast experience of setting up and running a similar tour company before that was voted the Best Travel Company in the UK by the Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO). The company also won a Silver at the prestigious British Travel Awards.
We take pride in our professional approach, friendly demeanour and determination to deliver an outstanding service. As such, our business is driven by passion, trust and openness. This means that we have respect for our clients and have a deep understanding of their needs and aspirations.
We and our tailor-made travel experiences offer excellent value for money and firmly believe that we are the most competent quality tour operator in the UK for India and its neighbours.
We have an ATOL license from the Civil Aviation Authority in the UK, which protects your holiday.
It is part of our ethos to protect our environment and preserve and support local communities and traditional skills.
Our promoters and advisers are a collection of experts from diverse aspects of travel including from the fields of wildlife, treks and adventure, literature, social work, environment and preservation, music, dance, arts and crafts, photography and, of course, culture and heritage. We have come together to be part of a bigger story - the first-ever India specialist travel company worldwide.
Our biggest treasure? - our clients who trust us, recommend us, guide us, and travel with us with total assurance.
Our tailor-made holidays to India can take you all across the country to experience everything that this incredible land has to offer. From rural Rajasthan to the natural beauty of Kerala, from tiger safari holidays in India’s amazing national parks to the Indian Himalayas and numerous less visited but equally wonderful regions.
That’s not all, however, as we also cater to other amazing locations on the Indian subcontinent, such as Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, utilising our knowledge and experience of the entire region.
If you are looking for the perfect tailor-made holiday, book with Harji’s India – the India travel experts. Get in touch today and let us be your travel guide to holiday destinations in India and beyond.
Shiksha was founded in 2002 to provide free educational and vocational training to underprivileged children and youth. The primary motivation is to enable children from poor families to join the educational process rather than be left behind due to lack of documentation, lack of prior education, social isolation (especially for children of rural migrant workers) or financial constraints.
Shiksha initially adopted a government school, providing basic facilities to its students, such as potable water, mid-day meal, functioning toilets, school uniforms, extracurricular activities and additional teachers. Subsequently, it started its own schools.
“Many thanks to you & your wonderful staff for a truly amazing holiday”
“Harji, Wow! Another great adventure in India. Quite different to the last one but certainly nonetheless impressive and just what we wanted – Mountains, monasteries and people. It all went so well...”
“Harji helped us to plan an appropriate trip taking account of the monsoon season, and our particular wishes...”
An army child brought up in different parts of India, Harji founded Trans Indus in the UK in 1988, soon after his MBA from the London Business School. He ran this as a family company with his wife for 25 years, making it one of the largest operators of tailor-made holidays to India and winning a string of awards, including being voted the best tour operator in the UK by the Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO). He is no longer associated with Trans Indus and instead focussed on his new venture, Harji’s India, which aims to be the first and possibly the only company in the world of travel exclusively promoting India on a global scale. Having personally created over 20,000 itineraries in the past 33 years, Harji knows what makes travel to India truly special.
Lopamudra (Lupin) Chatterjee originally hails from Kolkata and trained in Hindustani classical music under the tutelage of Pt. Usha Ranjan Mukherjee (a prominent disciple of Ustad Amir Khan of Indore Gharana). She is an electrical engineer by training but after a few years in the industry, she decided to focus on teaching Hindustani classical music to children and spread the practice of vocal music to the younger generation in the US. She has been actively involved in the Indian community in Southern California and has organized many cultural events and music concerts by hosting renowned visiting artists from India. She supports myriad art and cultural organizations in California with India connections.
A civil servant turned entrepreneur, Balagopal founded Peninsula Polymers in Kerala when blood storage bags in India were imported almost exclusively from the USA. After an uphill struggle, the company became the largest manufacturer of blood bags in India, and today has the largest blood bag manufacturing plant in the world, in Trivandrum, employing over 1,000 workers. The business has been bought over by Terumo from Japan and is now called Terumo Penpol. Bala is also the author of a book on Manipur, “On a clear day you can see India”, apart from two other books. He runs several charities and is a regular speaker on subjects of social interest as well as entrepreneurship. With his extensive contacts in Japan, he is keen to bring Japanese travellers to India.
Vikas founded Indigo Consulting, one of the leading digital marketing companies in India, employing over 200 staff in Mumbai, managing websites of well-known names like HSBC. The company has now been bought over by Leo Burnett. Vikas started his career with Harji in travel in London, hired as a fresh graduate from IIM Ahmedabad, before becoming an outstanding entrepreneur. Member of a rock band, he is a keen guitarist and has a key role in this venture.
An M Phil in Economics from Oxford University, Vikram had a long and distinguished career with the World Bank where he last served as the Chief Economist and Director for Poverty Reduction. He specialises in East Asia, South Asia including India as well as Sub Saharan Africa. He was also Chair in Southeast Asian Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is currently the Distinguished Practitioner-in-Residence at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and lives in Maryland.
After post-graduate studies at Oxford in Sociology, as a Rhodes Scholar, Vinita set up and ran a successful placement company at Bengaluru catering to the then-nascent IT sector. She then turned to running an NGO focused on gender issues called VOICES and ran it for several years. She now lives in Kochi and spends her time between running the ANAHA Trust that invests in social entrepreneurship projects, community work, reading, and travel, besides looking after our interests in the South.
Alok Chatterjee is a mission manager at the prestigious Jet Propulsion Lab of NASA in Pasadena. He was Harji's classmate for engineering at IIT Kharagpur as well as his fellow scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation in Kerala. His name came to prominence for the discovery of water molecules on the surface of the Moon near the poles by the NASA team collaborating with India on the Chandrayaan-1 mission in 2008. He is the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and is the driving force behind the collaboration since 2004 between NASA and ISRO. He lives in Irvine, California and visits India frequently for terrestrial and spiritual exploration to complement his passion for planetary exploration.
Anuradha Nehru is the founder and artistic director of the Kalanidhi Dance School and Company. An award-winning Kuchipudi dancer, teacher, and choreographer, Anuradha has taught dance for over twenty-five years in the United States and many of her students have become outstanding young classical dancers in their own right and are now dancing professionally. As a choreographer, Anuradha’s quest is to constantly find new ways to create fresh and relevant works that connect with contemporary audiences. She believes in staying true to the depth and beauty of the Indian classical dance style while pushing its boundaries to explore new avenues of creative expression. In 2016, Anuradha received the Montgomery County Executive’s Outstanding Artist Award for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities.
A post-graduate in Tourism from the University of Westminster, Nicole has more than eighteen years of experience in the travel trade, including as a Director of Motion Europe, a London based well-established tour operator. She is passionate about India and over the years has travelled extensively there covering Rajasthan, Kerala, Amritsar and Himachal. Born and brought up in Berlin, Nicole is an unabashed perfectionist; her speciality lies in ensuring all arrangements for her clients are seamless and without fault. She has lived briefly in South East Asia and speaks French, German and Russian, apart from English.
