Off to England, the Long Way Round

This evening I set off on a trip back to England, but this time I am going the other way round. I have bought myself a round the world ticket so I am off for a week in the UK with a little side trip to India on the way.

It has been something that was pulled together quite quickly, but it is amazing how much you can do in an evening on the internet. The round the world ticket sites have nice web applications that let you point and click your way around the world building a ticket as you go. At the end, however, it turned out to be not quite so automated, at least not in my case, as I was led to a travel agent (remember those folks) who manually re-built and priced the ticket – Sacramento – LA – Taipei– Kuala Lumpur – Mumbai – Delhi – London – Los Angeles – Sacramento.

I have also been making travel arrangements within India on the train and for those I have e-tickets. I am going from Mumbai to Delhi by overnight sleeper, and then from Delhi to Agra (the Taj Mahal) and back in the same day. The Indian Railways reservation system is internet enabled and I have got my tickets with reserved seating/sleeping. Despite what you see on the travel programs, all the long distance trains are assigned seating so there is no overcrowding problem. I even think it will be relatively luxurious. In doing this I discovered a great train travel website - The Man in Seat 61 - everything you want to know about train travel anywhere in the world.

So there will be a lot of flying in the next few days and something is bound to go wrong with all those connections. In fact something already has gone wrong. As I was sitting at my desk this afternoon, the phone rang and it was United Airlines telling me that my first flight down to LA was cancelled. They didn't have much else to offer other than get to the airport right now for a flight leaving in a couple of hours. Not a good start but I did manage to get to the airport and I am just about to board.

So, I have always wanted to see India, and have kept putting it off for a time when I could have lots of time to do it properly – well that hasn’t happened yet, so I am taking the other approach and taking advantage of a very brief trip while I can.

Stay tuned for posts along the way.