Dragoman Reviews 13

My recent Madagascar trip with Dragoman was absolutely incredible. We were able to see 18 different types of lemurs, with their babies, as well as three different types of Baobabs, many fascinating insects, and the elusive fossa. The knowledge of the local guides was phenomenal, our Dragoman tour leader top-notch, excellent accommodations ranging from mid-scale to incredibly impressive. The whole experience made for one of my best trips ever. Dragoman staff organized an outstanding experience. Thank you. Carole

Trip of a lifetime from Victoria Falls to Capetown. Amazing group of people from all different backgrounds and the tour leader, driver and cook were exemplory. Would highly recommend

Wendy and I just had another tour with this company, this time to Madagascar. The trip was particularly advertised as an opportunity to see lemurs. It was really great. We saw 18 species! Some with babies. The local guides employed by the company were exceptional; one was able to mimic something like 120 bird species to attract birds in.

We travelled in 4wd much of the time as the roads were very bad. The big orange trucks used elswhere by Dragoman would have been impractical. Travelling was slow and rough but the country is desperately poor and they can't afford to fix the roads.

Another real highlight of our trip were our fellow travellers, a lovely group, and especially our Dragoman guide Lisa. She was experienced, on top of things, endlessly enthusiastic and sang all day.

A great trip. Not our first with this company and possibly not our last.
Peter

What an adventure! This was a region of the world that I’ve wanted to see for a very long time and I was not disappointed. When travelling I want much more than to experience countries by flitting around between cities and tourist hotspots, I want to see the ‘places in between’. A long-overdue return to an overland expedition seemed the perfect way to achieve this for Central Asia. 

I very much enjoyed the general design and mix of the trip, having great fun on and using the truck, camping, staying in guesthouses and taking part in various different activities and day tours outside of this.

We did have our issues. In this region the truck can sometimes only manage 15km/h along brutal roads with a lot of bouncing around inside. Travelling by SUV is certainly better for those who want to be guaranteed to hit absolutely everything on their itinerary and want things to go smoothly. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the full overland experience of taking everything in slowly through the large windows on the truck while moving through some of the most desolate, isolated and breathtaking landscapes I’ve ever seen, and think speed is not the priority in these situations.

I could not speak more highly of the crew. Jordan, Ryan and Mikki are all very talented at what they do. Seeing how things can go a bit pear-shaped very quickly (regarding weather, mechanical issues, health problems on board, safety, geopolitics/borders) having the right leader can make or break a trip. They played a major role in ensuring the trip was the epic adventure that I dreamed of. There were some members of the trip who proved difficult along the way, with some bizarre and nasty behavior on display at times, but I think the tour leaders navigated these tricky situations admirably.

Other random points to note: 1/ I enjoyed having my own tent vs the setup under old Dragoman as you can go long periods without your own space on the truck so some alone time is nice. 2/ There was mention of some of these trips in future having only one driver, I think in the case of this trip it would be dangerous given the sometimes 15 hour+ days with intense concentration required. 3/ There were some heavier duty trucks we saw that were able to handle the conditions better (3 axles, more clearance, etc) so some sort of changes to the vehicle design would be ideal. 4/ Due to weather we ended up in guesthouses some nights instead of camping. I was a bit disappointed at the time but ended up having some of the best experiences of the trip at the guesthouses as we got the opportunity to engage with lots of locals compared to camping the whole time. If I went to do the same trip again now I’d feel like I was missing out on connecting with the country in question by camping so much! 5/ The range of expectations of other fellow travelers for the trip was far wider than I had expected or seen years before. Some would not camp, on a trip that is clearly 40% camping, and some seemed very surprised whenever things didn’t go according to ‘plan’, partly the point of an overlanding trip. 6/ I very much enjoyed the time to explore in the more isolated areas of the region however much of this seemed to happen more accidentally due to mis-timings with most of the free daytime hours allotted only in the cities; it would’ve been nice to have some of this free time built in in hindsight. 

In summary, I had the trip of a lifetime. I have focused more on the criticisms here for informational purposes, but my overall experience was overwhelmingly positive. Given the nature of these trips things will go wrong and it’s also impossible to please everyone. Personally, I enjoyed many of the days when everything was going wrong as much as the days when everything went according to plan. This was exactly the adventure I hoped it was, being extremely testing at times but immensely rewarding, and was made all the better through the skills of the tour leaders. I am already dreaming of my next Dragoman trip with the hope of experiencing a few more parts of the world on an overland truck.

I recently did the 5 Stans from Ashgabat to Astana. This was my first trip with Dragoman. I enjoyed the trip very much and being on an overland truck allowed us to get off the beaten track which was great.Being on an overland six week journey things didn’t always go to plan but for me that just added to the adventure and we still made it to Astana on time. Big thanks to the crew for their knowledge and professionalism. Already planning my next adventure.

I did not know about Dragoman pre-Covid, and am very happy that they have reinstated themselves as a budget travel company. My trip to Iceland included many of the "main" sites, but also a number of days in the lesser traveled Western Fjords. Unfortunately, the road to the lava flow was closed due to renewed activity, but that meant we got an extra day in the national park, so it was all good! If you are looking for a luxury tour company, then Dragoman is probably not for you, but if you enjoy camping, then this company is GREAT! The truck is comfortable, the food is excellent, the participatory chores are minimal, and the people are terrific. The only downside, for which Dragoman had NO control over, was the wifi and recharging situations at the various campsites. My suggestion would be to pack a Quick Charger, that you can then recharge when you get to a site with better charging opportunities.

For everyone who’s happy that dragoman is back…don’t be. Madventure Ltd bought the name and that’s it.
Nothing of the dragoman spirit survived.

The old trucks are gone and replaced by newer models which are so uncomfortable that every driving day resulted in a 12-14h ordeal.
The truck broke down on multiple occasions and even the welds on the passenger cab broke.
We never felt safe again and had to eventually get of the truck.

We booked an exploratory trip that was so poorly constructed and poorly researched that the itinerary went out the window at the third stop because we were in the wrong season.
Wrong starting day of the week which resulted in delays getting visas because we were in the wrong city over the weekend and so on.

Ultimately left the tour after 6 weeks of an 11 week journey.
No compensation was offered.

Please avoid at all cost and spend you hard earned money somewhere else

This company used to be one of the best overland companies and is now basically madventure.
It starts with the booking. Every mail you receive has faults. Wrong dates to put on your visa etc. Every mail comes back with an oops ‘one eagled eye passenger saw this or that’. So that’s when you know you’ve met Rhona, or should I call her Rhonda. After all she never got my husband’s name correct. When you are doing your trip and after a few weeks you see the posts on social media about your trip, you realize immediately that the posts are made by someone sitting at a desk in England and has no idea what’s going.
We were on the 7 stans, knowing well this was an exploratory trip. Having said that you can only hide behind that so many times. The first few days we were traveling in a minivan and didn’t even make it in time. I dare William to drive me in this shitty truck we were in, from Lahore to Rawalpindi via Rothas Fort, have time to visit the fort, and be on time for visiting the truck shop!! That truck was not good enough for good roads let alone the few bad roads we had to do. And when you point this out, on one of your own photos they use on social media, they accuse you of lying. Who’s lying?? You are!! You are not Dragoman. You just bought their mailing list!! They no longer have the rule to have two drivers, something dragoman was adamant about It’s just insane. We had days when we were on the road for 20 hours. I will say it again and again. This company now is all about photos on social media. ‘Look we are the first to do this, to go there’. They don’t care about your safety. It’s all about the money. Let me be very clear. I stepped off that coffin on wheels in the middle of a dessert, asking politely for a waiver to do so. This was not given to me. Not even after the 10th time, only after putting me in a car against my will, I got the document!! So if you want to know why I was ‘abusive’, a word they like to use at the new Drago HQ, it was because they took away my free will, the decision was mine!! Not Jordan’s. I also knew that I wasn’t getting any money back as this is not my first or second overland trip. It was probably our 15th time on a overland vehicle. I just didn’t wanna see that misogynistic tourleader and Mikki anymore!! It was because Jordan and my husband went over my head AGAIN that a so called ‘hybrid plan’ came up again. So you may accuse me of making fake profiles, kicking me off the trip. We all know… I had nothing to do with that profile. I wasn’t abusive to other people especially not after the first warning!! I was not in the same countries most of the time!! I didn’t wanna be on your trip, specifically on your truck, after Turkmenistan. Giving someone an ultimatum by making them promise ‘this won’t happen again’ when you are not stating what happened to begin with… if there were sooo many complaints about my behavior why wasn’t I informed?? Why wasn’t there a friendly conversation about how I made other people feel. It all came up after jeez what was the first thing me being suicidal than abusive oooh and the best one interfering with the itinerary. Not that your ‘tourleader’ was responsible for not giving me the document or even on a different occasion just kept the group waiting for over an hour just for putting the wrong passport in his bag!!! Not someone who fell of a horse and slowed the whole group so much that you were 100km away from where you were going. At least I took a plane in Afghanistan. Thank god, freedom!! Not being followed around by your guards!! Saying Overlanding is not for me…. True. Traveling with old people that love to have a local guide with a little flag in front of them is not my cup of tea. I will stick with adventurous companies. Companies that do wild camps when they say they are doing wild camps. Not a company that brags about ‘how everything runs smoothly’ like in your post about the Pamir #wildcampS ? Make that one wild camp instead of the four planned. The shitty truck was too slow (6 hours slower in one day than one of the good old trucks Drago used to have) and broke down again!! People started wondering off, something I wasn’t allowed to do. I’ve never been on a trip whether it was just a group travel or an overland trip, where so many people left sometimes just without saying anything to anyone. Started traveling on their own, because finally they were exploring the Stan’s. Taking planes instead of sitting on that truck 2 days.
So please. If you gonna write a review here. Please do so after you really traveled with them. In 2011 I would have given 5 stars too. Sadly this is not Dragoman anymore. These days it’s just sitting on the truck. Not enough time to visit things. Bad communication with HQ. Example:the reply here was the first time the company actually informed me I was kicked of the trip, no mail, no message. The list goes on and on. I just felt unsafe on the truck.

This company advertise the Japan and South Korea trip as "small group", with a maximum of 16, average 12. But they ran 2 groups (totalling 29 people) at the same time, in the same hotels, using the same local tours and travelling as one group together on public transport. Virtually doubling the number totally changes the dynamics of a group. They deny this, stating there were two independent WhatsApp groups. That actually caused more confusion between the intermingling 29 travellers than it assisted. Put simply, if you book a small group tour with Dragoman you CANNOT be sure you will get a small group experience! I am not a generally negative reviewer but, as they refused my claim for a sensible level of compensation to take this error on their part into consideration, I think I have a fair grievance. Small group tour it was not! There were other issues that I could have forgiven, as the tour leaders were pleasant enough. Neither had any Japanese, but you can get along without it. Both arrived the day before the tour so were more than likely jet lagged for a few days. Eventually, after 7 days, we started getting decent information sheets about destinations. One significant location on the itinerary was accidentally almost missed but it ended up giving us another small free excursion. We were originally sent to the wrong Hotel right at the start which was a real pain and caused large initial confusion. The important initial group meeting was a disaster, with no suitable location found, due to lack of experience of this location by the guides. APA hotels have virtually no communal areas and miniature rooms. Decent standards but personally I disliked there "flashy lobby but mini rooms and very limited communal space" approach. Genuinely I would not have complained about these things if the group size, as advertised, had been adhered to OR Madventure (who own the Dragoman name now, so Dragoman is essentially just a mailing list) had compensated me suitably. I am still considering taking them to the small claims court, as I see the misrepresentation as cut and dried. A real shame as I had had a tour with Dragoman on my radar for many years.

I have had great experiences with Dragoman under the old management.

I loved the sturdy, heavy-duty tents that Dragoman provided. They were easy to erect and spacious for 2 people.

Under Dragoman's new management tents are no longer provided. You now need to bring not only a sleeping bag and sleeping mat, but a tent as well. How many KG of the airline luggage allowance will now be taken up by these items alone?

Competitor company, OASIS, do provide tents even though they market themselves as a budget operator, and generally have less inclusions than Dragoman.

I hope Dragoman's new managers continue the tradition of providing extensive training in motor mechanics so that the driver/tour leaders can maintain the truck and repair it when there is a breakdown. I hope too that the company provides extensive first aid training.

Sadly, costs are rising and overlanding is no longer the cheap option it now was. The age profile is getting higher and higher. These days most passengers - including my wife and I- are pension age 'grey nomads'.

Great group touring experience. Great knowledgeable tour guides and drivers. Have travelled with them a number of times and love the dynamics of group and trips.
You can be within a group or be solo depending how your mood takes you.
I love the off the beaten track element and far out destinations. Would def travel with them again.
My trips were back in 2015 but dates do not roll back that far.
I'm so happy they're back on the road!

Me and my partner Trish have travelled on so many Drago trips from 2008 (we actually lost count…) and just love the company values and the amazing destinations. We have made so many friends, passengers and crew over the years and can’t wait to jump back on the orange trucks. We were actually on a truck in India when the pandemic struck so finding that the company is reemerging is just wonderful.