Two words on the front door of the house, and a promise that is easy to say and hard to keep. This is what they mean, in the order a journey happens.
Your sarathi’s name and photograph, the car and its number, the hour it will be at your door — sent the evening before, so that nothing on the day is a stranger. For an arrival, a photograph of exactly where he will stand.
Ten minutes early, and never announced with a horn. The door opened; the bag taken; an arm offered to the one who would like it; the cabin already at the temperature you keep. If the house is late, it pays — a fifth of the fare beyond ten minutes, half beyond forty-five.
Quiet, unless you asked for your music, in which case it is already playing. The water you drink, the seat you prefer, the language you would like spoken, the things you never want — remembered from the last time, so you never say them twice. Your room with the house keeps them.
A driver who drives and a sarathi who rides in front and watches over you: the route, the stop you did not have to ask for twice, the silence kept. Nobody is hurried; nobody is talked at. Someone you name is told you are on your way, and told when you are home.
The house waits — ninety minutes after a domestic landing and two full hours after an international one, counted from the gate, without a word about it. At a door, fifteen minutes. The clock is the house’s concern, not yours.
From your third journey, once in every twelve months, the car for one occasion you have told the house about arrives dressed with flowers — because arriving somewhere should sometimes feel like being received. Nothing is asked for it, and nothing is ever asked of you — not a rating, not a tip, not a review.
Not a red carpet every time — that is the welcome, for the day that asks for it. Celebrated here means something quieter and rarer in this city: expected, noticed, and received. The journey knows who is inside it. It knows it is your mother’s first visit since the operation, that the box on the seat is a cake, that the silence is for a call you are about to take. Any car can carry you from one place to another; the house would like you to step out better than you stepped in.
Nothing beyond the written figure. The waiting, the door, the water, the remembering, the word to whoever you named and the flowers once a year are inside the standard, not sold beside it. What every journey carries · the rate card · why the house.
Reserve a journeyA written figure first. Then the car — and everything on this page with it.