Our journey from India to Thailand turned out to be an endurance test. We left our hotel in Mumbai at 10a.m. on 17th May & got to our hotel in Bangkok at 2p.m. on 18th May - despite the fact that there is a direct flight between these 2 cities that takes just four & a half hours! Our flights took us north to New Delhi, then south to Colombo, in Sri Lanka, before finally heading north-west to Bangkok! How did this happen? Well, in the rush to organise our travel plans, for 18 months ahead, in the space of about 3 months last summer, we had booked our main flights & destinations through a company called Real Gap, who in turn used the services of The Flight Centre. When the details of all the flights proposed came through for approval, we only gave them a cursory glance to make sure the prices were reasonable & that we would get to the places we wanted to go on the dates we wanted to be there! We did not get out a map! We will in future!
The nonsense of our convoluted route was compounded by the fact that the Tamil Tigers had recently begun to target Colombo Airport so the Sri Lankan authorities took the decision to close the airport between 10.30p.m. & 5a.m. every night. Of course, it was during those hours that our flights in & out were scheduled, so our flights were held back, giving us very unwanted extra time in Delhi airport! It's a hassle to get in & out of the departure building there, past security guards who specialise in building up long queues & don't want anyone to leave once they are inside, certainly not by the door they entered, never mind that the airport lounge is on the other side of the road! On top of that, there are all the people trying to "help" with your luggage when you don't want help & the people trying to get you into taxis to go to places you don't want to go! Once we managed to get the information we needed about our rescheduled flights (not easy either!) we took ourselves off to the luxury of the nearby Radisson Hotel to while away the hours in a saner (but very expensive!) atmosphere.
The other major mistake that we made, we now realise, was to start our time in India in the cooler north in February & work our way down to the pre-monsoon heat & humidity of the south in April/May. As a result of not having thought of the bleedingly obvious, we had to live for weeks at temperatures of 40 degrees celsius with 95% humidity (& it's going to be more of the same in Thailand). We can't say "It's been no sweat", because it's been nothing but!
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