'Survivor' creator and Jeffrey Katzenberg tour India

They didn’t eat squirmy worms or sleep under lean-tos. But Mark Burnett, the reality TV impressario behind “Survivor,” and Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., had a swell time anyway touring India together. After all, their guide was Geoffrey Kent, chairman and chief executive of Abercrombie & Kent, the luxury travel company.

Kent, in the Los Angeles area this week to promote his company’s new destination club for the super-rich, told me he spent more than a week in India in April with the duo, along with their wives, Mark’s Roma and Jeffrey’s Marilyn.

“I always wanted to show Jeffrey and Mark tigers,” Kent said, after pausing in his Beverly Hills Hotel suite to take a call from Katzenberg, a longtime friend. And see tigers they did: at least half a dozen, by Kent’s count, at Ranthambore National Park. “They were magnificent,” Kent said.

Talk about a royal tour. The group chatted with maharajahs and stayed at swank retreats, such as the storied Taj Lake Palace in Udaipur (pictured), that Kent rated “six-star.”

Along the way, Kent said, “We made a lot of jokes about how you travel with Abercrombie & Kent versus how you travel with ‘Survivor.’ ”

–Jane Engle, Los Angeles Times Assistant Travel Editor

[Photos by Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces]

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 at 5:42 pm by Jane Engle and is filed under Asia, Celebrity, Eco-Travel, Luxury Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.