Pre holiday, holiday report. (Something to wet your whistle)

In July 2009 we decided that we would return to Goa in 2010 after all despite my tantrums in Dabolim airport about having my passport checked 15 times. Once we had made our minds up we emailed the Lucia Beach Guest house in Candolim to see if they had any vacancies for the weeks we wanted, our luck was in and we had our accommodation organised within a few days.

We had planned a three week holiday this time as we wanted to do something special to celebrate our 30 year wedding anniversary although that is not until July. We both work for the same health service and are normally able to take our bank holidays as floating days when we like, so after a bit of negotiation with our ward managers we able to have 24 nights in India and 28 days off in total so we fly on the Thursday 20th and return home on the 15th Feb.

Flight options for three weeks where very expensive with the likes of First Choice and Thomas Cook so after researching the forum I started to "watch" the prices on Southall travels website, prices fluctuated a bit over a couple of weeks with Qatar being the cheapest with a stop over in Doha, we still did not fancy the "bunfight" at Dabolim international arrivals and departure as this would be our point of entry into India. Kingfisher's prices suddenly dropped to £360 each so a quick phone call to Southall to confirm it was not a web error and I was relieved of £720 over the phone and we where booked. Rang kingfisher and have reserved seats on all legs of our journey and the airport taxi is sorted via text to the Ashok the guy we have used for a number of years.

As I mentioned earlier this time we wanted to do something a bit special to create a lasting memory of a wonderful married life (she is stood behind me whilst I type this bit) We decided that we would like to do the golden triangle tour so after more research on the forum and then the internet I emailed a number of companies and we opted for a company called Sagwat tours, through a series of emails we where able to organise the hotels that suited us for the 6 day 5 nights trip, an upgrade to a Toyota Innova for the duration as I want to be able to stop and photograph other places of interest along the way and an English speaking courier to boot. As the exchange rate for the rupee is dropping we paid in full even though they only wanted half as a deposit

At this point I realised that we could have saved money by landing at Delhi doing the tour and then flying internally to Goa for the remainder of our holiday as it is we booked two internal flights and will see the inside of Jaipur airport as well. We opted for Spicejet from Goa to Jaipur, paid for it on my wife's credit card checked with our bank beforehand who said that it was ok to use abroad, it was refused. I rang the Spicejet help line as suggested and tried to give her the reference number on the screen I ended up on the phone for 22 minutes as she re entered our booking and processed our payment, as the web service does not accept non Indian credit cards. After looking up call rates from my phone provider I think that was a £16 phone call. Our return flight from Delhi to Goa is with Indigo and it was all booked and paid for without a hitch.

That ladies and gentleman of the forum is my pre holiday, holiday report.
All that remains for us to do now is to accumulate a large wedge of convertible drinking tokens and wait for January to arrive.
I will post a detailed report of our trip and post photos when we return in February.

GM06
Ian

hope all goes well for yous

thread tidied up.

Thanks Fiona.

Keep up the good work

great Ian ..
chilly

Going on Monday just for a week.No shacks apparently so it will be interesting to see how different things are.We will probably be going again in March.

With so many negative things being posted lately(not judging,just observing) will try to give a balanced view sometime first week of December.

Papa

Look forward to it Papa

Thanks Papa I hope you have a brilliant time

Six members and seven guests browsing the Goa forum at just after 11 on a week night.I would say there will be many trip reports to come.

Papa

Off to bed now work tomorrow.

Never mind the shacks Papa,theres a few of the "fixed" ones there you can use.
It is absolutly BOILING HOT here today!...I'm no weather forecaster but i think we've seen the last of the dodgy weather!

Excellent news spaldy

papa