Reviews
US
Email Birch | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Can't be trusted. Kenneth Karuhanga is a fraud.
Four months ago we reached out to Ken for a proposal to organize our trip to Tanzania. He is based in Uganda but is also listed as leading tours in Tanzania on your website, and his proposed itinerary and reviews made him seem like a good fit. He said he would be the guide for both our six-day ascent of Kilimanjaro and our five-day safari from Moshi. He asked for a $1000 deposit to cover national park fees and staffing costs, which seemed fair.
One week before the trip Ken told us he needed more money since it was the holiday season and costs were higher. We felt it was unfair to change the budget right before we started traveling, but agreed to move forward with the trip as planned and to pay the extra sum when we arrived.
When we arrived in Moshi and expected to meet Ken, we instead met a woman named Neema Mushi who runs an agency called Licious Travel Adventures (also on your site). She explained that Ken was not coming to Tanzania at all, that her price of the trip was under budget and that Ken had not forwarded any of the deposit money we had sent him.
We spent many evenings frantically trying to reach Ken and recover the deposit money to run our trip as planned, but Ken said he had needed the money for "another project" and couldn't send it right now. He finally sent $175 to Neema, but that didn't cover half of the new price increases she insisted on.
Possibly worst of all we learned that Ken had been pushing Neema lower and lower on her price, while asking us for more and more money. When we asked him what he felt he did to deserve the $825 cut he took for himself, he said something about booking the one hotel we stayed in during our trip.
Our experience with Ken was one of: 1) misleading us to believe that he would be leading the trip; 2) never once mentioning he was reselling our trip to an extreme budget agency; 3) lies about early cost increases of the trip and sticking us with the bill of the actual increases; 4) theft of our deposit money (he still refuses to return it)