Packaged Sojourn

 With the advent of summer vacations in a couple of months, travel operators have gone on an overdrive with their big advertisements enticing us with jaunts to exotic places.

Actually, packaged tours are quite convenient if one does not want to go through the hassle of making multiple bookings and also look for discounts.But, many a times there is a big gap between what they advertise and what is actually provided on the ground. As a family we have gone on several packaged tours and generally we have had a good time, though with a few hiccups.

As is the norm for Indian travelers,  my first packaged tour was to Singapore and Malaysia. We had a young tour guide who was a former air hostess. Somehow, she used to get airsick during all our flights. We used to wonder how she ever managed in her profession. The mystery was solved when we found that she was in the family way and was wracked with bouts of morning sickness. We spent the rest of the trip mollycoddling her. But the whole trip was quite enjoyable as it was the first foreign trip for most of us.

My wife and I took a trip to Europe through a well-known tour operator. It taught us that one must check carefully all that is promised in the brochure. Ask for the details when they say: ‘Day 1-Arrival Paris. City tour, including the Eiffel Tower’. Your flight will land around 7 am. Hotel check-in is at 2 pm. So the city tour starts right from the airport in your tired and bedraggled condition. You are driven around the city till it is time to register at the hotel, which generally would be on the outskirts. You are too pooped to do anything afterwards. To compound that, you have to carry your own baggage to your room unless you are staying in a five-star hotel.

Our first day in Switzerland was a disaster. The guide forgot to inform the Pakistani restaurant about the dinner to be delivered to our Lucerne hotel. When the food arrived four hours later, the caterer left behind the crockery and the cutlery. So we begged the hotel for some plates. The manager was reluctant but later agreed on condition that we ourselves wash the plates after dinner. Luckily, he did not insist on that. But it was a pleasant surprise when at the top of Mount Titlis we found a sign in Hindi that read ‘Welcome to Indian citizens’.

But group tours are also a great way of making friends. On our Europe sojourn we became friends with a young couple. They had some blue-blood flowing through them but were otherwise pretty friendly. The girl turned out to be the daughter of a former chief minister who is somewhat of a blabbermouth in the Grand Old Party now sitting in the opposition. Invariably there will always be a ‘Late Latif’ in all groups. We had this doctor from Jaipur who would drive us up the wall by being the last to board the bus. Towards the end of the tour even his family had got fed up.

Overseas travel is one area where Indians still command respect. After all we are the ones who still spend a lot of money on shopping.