Day 1 & 2 - On Our Way to India

The day has finally arrived when Alison and I head to India. Most often, when we plan a trip (particularly a big international trip), it goes through a lengthy iterative process. We start with a high-level idea or goal, usually a year or more in advance. We pencil the trip into a specific time frame. As it gets closer, normally, around a year out we do a deeper dive into the trip. This deep dive includes pricing flights, hotels, and activities; reaching out to tour companies (if relevant to the destination), and putting together a potential itinerary. We spreadsheet out itineraries. For each big trip, we build a spreadsheet with a column for every day. Within the columns, we detail potential activities, hotels, etc. This provides a nice summary view of the trip. We begin booking flights and hotels up to a year in advance, whenever we find a good price. As the trip approaches we revisit our plans and adjust as necessary. We will also prepay select activities, etc. Most of our big trips follow a similar process. As a result, we do most of our major planning and booking months in advance. Because of this timing, I find I get excited about a trip when we are planning/booking, but then the excitement fades a bit as we enter waiting mode. Despite the long lead time I almost always feel like the trip sneaks up on me. I woke up earlier this week feeling amazed that our trip to India was already here. As it got closer, I found my excitement building and I am very excited to be on our way to India.

We opted to hire a tour company to plan this trip to India. We chose to go with a tour company for a few reasons. First, while we knew a few things we wanted to see in India, we wanted some advice on the best sites and locations to visit. Second, India is a developing nation and we decided we did not want to arrange accommodations and transportation ourselves. Additionally, tour prices are quite reasonable in India. When we compared the cost of our itinerary through the tour company to an estimate of the cost if we booked it ourselves the difference would only be a few hundred dollars. It is worth it for us to pay the few hundred extra dollars to have a driver and a local guide throughout our trip. It is also very nice to rely on the tour company and not have to plan an in-depth itinerary for this trip.

Alison researched and identified the company we chose – Trinetra Tours. We were looking for a local company because we find that local companies provide a better experience at a reasonable price. We chose Trinetra because they offered a tour in the areas we wanted to visit and they are highly rated on Trip Advisor.  We reached out to them with our goals for the trip and they got back to us promptly and provided a detailed 8-page itinerary. We went back and forth with them tweaking the itinerary until we were happy with it. Emailing them was an experience. They were very orotund in their communication. Here are a few examples:

“A relief and a delight to hear that there were no cyber piracies and the mails did reach you with all facets intact! The flip side of this is that you have had to sift through a lot of verbal diarrhea. However, I am delighted that you have not taken umbrage to this.”

“I am delighted to hear that we are getting close to finalizing the tour. Once this frontier would be crossed, then, the decks would be cleared for you to fall in love with India and her offerings uninhibitedly!!! The tour in question would indeed be a romance of a lifetime. The sights, smells, and delicate human contact would touch your life delicately, but, deeply! We will make sure that this dream is realized in all its brilliance.”

“It has been nothing, but, a sheer pleasure to engage with you. I am experiencing a sense of kinship with you, and, do feel that I have a much better understanding of your travel needs now.”

We put in a good deal of preparation for this trip. This is not the first developing nation we have visited, but due to specific medical concerns (malaria, Delhi belly, etc.), we exercised more caution on this trip than we have on some previous trips. To ensure we were adequately prepared we visited the Salt Lake County Travel Clinic. We went in expecting them to give us a couple of vaccines and send us on our way. Our experience was much better than we expected. We sat down with a clinician for nearly an hour as he walked us through the health risks in the areas we would be visiting. He discussed our plans in detail and tailored the risk assessment to our trip. He then suggested vaccines, behaviors, and medications to address the risks. We got a couple of vaccines and we came away better prepared to avoid unpleasant experiences during our travel. We already knew about quite a few of the items he recommended, i.e. drinking bottled water, being cautious about our food choices, wearing effective mosquito repellent, etc., but it was a good refresher. He also gave us a prescription for malaria medication because one of the areas we will be visiting is considered high risk for malaria. We left feeling prepared to have the best trip possible.

In the days leading up to our trip, we accumulated the supplies we would need to minimize our risks – we bought a pile of Pepto Bismol tablets, we bought insect repellent (the one we chose balances effective mosquito prevention and spraying ourselves with poisonous chemicals) and stocked up on a variety of over the counter treatments. We also treated the clothes we were taking with a mosquito prevention spray for an added level of protection. Shout out to Blake and Debbie for letting us set up a makeshift clothesline in their backyard where we could spray our clothes. We left on this trip feeling as prepared as ever for an international adventure.

We had an interesting situation with our flights to India, that necessitated some change. We booked our flights through Delta using Skymiles. I hate to say the flights were free because many of those miles were earned by Alison during her many work trips. While we did not have to pay cash (except for taxes and airport fees associated with the tickets) these flights still had a real cost. The cost is all of the travel Alison does and all the days and nights she spends away from home. We enjoy the travel benefits, but we also recognize the trade-off required to accumulate these benefits. Anyway, one day at work a headline caught my eye. Jet Airways, the second largest carrier in India, was suspending all flights, and potentially going out of business. This caught my eye because Jet Airways was a Delta partner and the second leg of our flight to India and the first leg of our flight home were scheduled on Jet Airways. I immediately called Delta, but they weren't changing our flights because the future of Jet Airways was still unknown. Within a few days, it became clear Jet Airways was not going to make it. I tried working with Delta to change our flight arrangements. I got something that kind of worked but wasn't an ideal flight schedule. Alison called them and worked her magic to get on some KLM flights with a much more acceptable schedule. It will still be a long flight day, but the flights are basically the same as our original flights. I am glad we planned this trip when we did because after Jet Airways went under the cost of flights to India has been up 10-25%.

Before arriving in India, we had one very long travel day. We flew from Salt Lake City to Atlanta to Amsterdam to New Delhi. The total flight time for these 3 flights is 19 hours and 30 minutes. The travel time also includes 3 hours and 4 minutes of layovers. For a grand total travel time of 22 hours and 34 minutes. When you throw in the time it takes to drive to the Salt Lake City airport, the time we spent waiting for our first flight in SLC, and the time it took to clear customs in New Delhi and drive to our hotel total travel time is well over 24 hours. Add in the fact that our flight lands at 1:45 a.m. local time on Sunday (there is an 11-hour and 30-minute time difference between India and Utah) and you have the makings of a long travel day(s).

We arrived in Delhi around 1:30 a.m. We were off the plane through customs and collected our bags very quickly. We were pleasantly surprised by the lack of line at customs. As we were exiting the airport we met with Rohit, a representative of our tour company, who took us to our waiting vehicle. Before we got into the van, Rohit gave us each a flower necklace to wear (very similar to a lei) as a welcome gesture. We then drove ~30 minutes to our hotel.

Rohit gave us some paperwork and instructions about the next day before we headed up to our room. We were finally in bed and asleep at ~3 a.m. Our long travel day was over we made it to India.