Planning for India

With Japan sorted out and planned on paper, I started looking at India as that was where our third cruise would end, in the fabulous city of Mumbai.  Our passage from Japan to India was taken care of through cruises, however once we arrived in India, we would need to do something.  

Planning for Southern India

I looked at a number of tour operators and then reached out for some quotes.  The first one, from a reputable Canadian firm was 15k for three weeks for the two of us – land portion only.  I thought India was supposed to be a bit cheaper than that!  Hotels in Mumbai and other places were reasonably priced, so I started putting my own plan together.

After a short time I asked myself “what are you thinking?”.  I was not able to speak the language and there would be a huge culture shock.  I looked around and found an Indian-based tour company and told them roughly what I wanted to do and they put together a package, very similar to the 15k one for 5.5k (all values in CDN).  This tour was for us only, included trains, airfare in India, private guides and drivers, accommodation at upscale places. I did a ton of research on this tour company, read countless reviews, searched some more and then booked the tour.

Starting in Mumbai, will travel to Goa, then on Bangalore, Ooty, Bandipore, Mysore, Munnar, Kochi and a few other places.  A lot of travel but so much to see!

While we were thinking about India, we noticed another cruise that hit some AMAZING places.  The sort of places that immediately make you think exotic destinations, like “wow” these are bucket list places.  These ports of call included the Seychelles, Zanzibar, Madagascar and others.  

We booked that cruise – the start of which coincided with the end of our three-week Indian tour.  The only add on was that we needed to get to Qatar, but as flights are easy to book, we managed to solve that.

Planning for Northern India

From the planning lens, we now found ourselves in Mauritius near the end of January with no plan. We decided that we should head back to India to see the northern part, or more accurately the “Golden Triangle”. I looked at some tours and through reading countless travel blogs, decided we could do this ourselves.  The tours certainly offer convenience, and a level of comfort, however if you’re willing to do the leg work and book things yourself, you can save a lot of money. I don’t think we would have tried this on our own without having visited India for three weeks the previous month and we always have the option of booking a tour, although that is unlikely as we have booked all of our hotels.

On to Nepal

After our two weeks touring Delhi and the Golden Triangle, we thought where to next?  Nepal.  It is a fascinating place, from what I’ve read and of course Mt Everest is there (no I will not be climbing it, nor will I be going to base camp).  However, the history, culture, people and more are amazing.  It’s a $100 flight from Delhi to Kathmandu, and an extra $8 to select a seat.  We’re each sitting in a window seat on the port side of the aircraft, that’s what will give you the views of the Himalaya mountains as you fly into Kathmandu.  We’ll spend two weeks touring and then we were going to go to Bali, or so we thought.

Let’s add Malaysia!

As I was trying to book our flight from Kathmandu to Bali, I looked at Air Malaysia and they were running a promotion.  If you booked a through flight from one international destination to another, through Malaysia, in our case Nepal to Bali, you could get a stopover in Malaysia including airfare to another part of the country for free.  Having never been to Malaysia, I quickly read up on it and we decided why not spend a week in Penang.  Our airfare from Kuala Lumpur to and from Penang was free, so we added another stop.  While this shortened our time in Bali, we thought it was a great idea to see something else.

From Malaysia, we would be heading to Bali where we would end our trip.  Our activities in Bali have not been planned, however it is still five months out and that is the low season, so coming up with a plan should be doable. From Bali we will fly home.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.  It has taken a lot of planning and it continues to evolve.  We’ll update things as we tweak our plans. 

We are ROAMing, RELAXing and REPEATing.