For those not familiar with our holidaying traditions, we tend to soak up the local lifestyle by sitting in bars and restaurants rather than queuing at cliched tourist traps. Some people think this ignores the surrounding culture; on the contrary we believe that food and drink are the binding elements of and between all cultures, and that to imbibe a culture's preferred food, wine, beer or other decadence is to show due respect to it. Besides, we like it.
Anyhow, back to the agenda: we fly to Mumbai tomorrow via Singapore, kindly with but a three-hour stop over. We get into Mumbai at some ungodly hour and, having surrendered long ago any pretense to being intrepid, gung-ho travellers, will be met by a driver who will take us safely to our waiting hotel bed. By a stroke of serendipity (and Adelaide's three degrees of separation), Bec knows someone who knows someone who lives in Mumbai and just happens to be a senior figure in that city's yachting and cricket-playing fraternity, so we may well live the high life with him for a day or two, otherwise sipping Kingfishers, Cobras and any other beers that come our way, and sampling the dishes that appear simultaneously delicious and safe.
From Mumbai we tackle the beaches and lazy lifestyle of Goa, spending four nights split between the state's capital Panaji and a southern town Palolem. From there we go to Mysore, Bangalore and Kochi, where we finally put our feet up to be punted around the backwaters of Kerala in a fully-catered houseboat. Needless to say I'm looking forward to that.
We're hoping that in between travel, dinner and drinks we might fit in a spot of health treatments at one of the myriad Ayurvedic health spas or a spiritual treatment at the famed ashram of the 'hugging mother', Mata Amritanandamayi. But these admittedly are stretch targets.
For now I sign off as we're now less than thirteen hours from take off and we're yet to pack...
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