It all began during a visit to Lucknow, when Rahul and Jaya ( Vasu’s brother and bhabhi, for those not in the know -don’t blame you for it!) showed us brochures of the tour and informed us that they had planned to sign on for this tour along with Uma di and Deepa ( Jaya’ elder and younger sister , respectively(don’t take it too hard if I hadn’t brought up this fact earlier!) and said that they would be very happy if we could also join them in this sojourn starting on May 30 and concluding on June 14. I had been to a number of the places listed in the itinerary, but mostly in transit or on business and it would be a different experience going there as a tourist, clad in jeans/shorts, tee shirts and walking shoes or floaters, with a bag slung across my shoulder to provide the necessary accessorial support, not that any sartorial issues were going to drive me to invest in the tour. It offered an excellent opportunity for Vasu to visit some of the countries that I had been to while at EIL and realize her long cherished desire of going to London, Paris and Switzerland, besides a nostalgic trip to Holland, where we had last gone 35 years back. After assessing that all was in order, it became an easy decision to take and join in. Thanks to Rahul, who was coordinating all the activities related to the booking with SOTC Lucknow, I had little to do other than accompany Vasu on some expeditions to shopping malls,etc. It would not be wise to go into the details of those tours as the time and space required would exceed that required to cover the Kuoni SOTC tour. Finally , around midnight on May 29, “-all our bags were packed and we were ready to go, waiting for the taxi to come and blow his horn, etc etc for we were leaving on a jet plane “ the next morning. Day 1 May 30 dawned bright, sunny and warm , subsequently to progress to hot , but the taxi did not turn up at the appointed hour-not a very encouraging portent. A couple of calls to the friendly neighbourhood taxi wallah, and he turned up at 07.15 hrs, so that we were at IGI Terminal 3 at the appointed hour to meet up with Rahul and the others. Well, after another 20 odd minutes of waiting, the six of us were together, checked in and were on our way. In the interim, we had managed to meet a few more group members. After all the formalities were completed we boarded flight EK 009 to Dubai, reaching our destination at about 13.00 hrs local time. A three hour break, most appropriately devoted to relaxing and we boarded flight EK-509 to London Gatwick arriving there at about 7.30 pm –could have been an hour earlier, but our departure was delayed by about an hour at Dubai. Once we got over the immigration and customs formalities, we made a beeline for the nearest SOTC representative we saw, only to learn that our names were not on his list. Help was close at hand in the form of Mr Khusro, who was filling in for our tour manager and after about an hour we were on the coach to our hotel in Wembley. There was still plenty of sunlight and the drive was quite interesting-plenty of greenery and flowers that looked like daisies and forget me nots ( remembered reading about them in school at Naini Tal). Besides some briefings about dos and don’ts, safety and security-we were told that there were three magic numbers that we would do well to remember and these were 6 (wake up) , 7 (breakfast) and 8 (departure) and considering that we had just reached London and may be somewhat tired etc the magic words for the next day would be 7,8,9..All of us had an Indian meal at the Blue Room restaurant, located across the road from the Holiday Inn , Wembley –ate well, pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food and after some chit chat, retired for the night with the comforting magic numbers of 7.8,9 in our minds. That in short, was the executive summary of day 1. We saw three airports T3 was very good, Dubai was absolutely fantastic –does not seem to stop growing, Gatwick was more like our small regional airports, looking almost dilapidated , but functioning very well. In addition , we saw the insides of two aircraft, one slightly old and the other quite new and of course had a preview of the English country side. All set for day 2-which hopefully would see some real “touristy”action. Lest I forget, please remember to make your food preference abundantly clear to the tour operator. The six of us had opted for Vegetarian Meal (AVML),but the operator in order to ensure that our veggie tenets were not violated in any manner whatsoever, put in a request for ‘Strictly Vegetarian) and we ended up having Vegan breakfast and Lunch. Not that the tummy complained, but the palates certainly did! Take care till the next dispatch. I don’t have any deadlines to meet, but want to make sure I get things done before everything gets erased from memory-strange, how one can recall many old time incidents, but has to really stretch to do the same for recent occurrences. It all began during a visit to Lucknow, when Rahul and Jaya ( Vasu’s brother and bhabhi, for those not in the know -don’t blame you for it!) showed us brochures of the tour and informed us that they had planned to sign on for this tour along with Uma di and Deepa ( Jaya’ elder and younger sister , respectively(don’t take it too hard if I hadn’t brought up this fact earlier!) and said that they would be very happy if we could also join them in this sojourn starting on May 30 and concluding on June 14. I had been to a number of the places listed in the itinerary, but mostly in transit or on business and it would be a different experience going there as a tourist, clad in jeans/shorts, tee shirts and walking shoes or floaters, with a bag slung across my shoulder to provide the necessary accessorial support, not that any sartorial issues were going to drive me to invest in the tour. It offered an excellent opportunity for Vasu to visit some of the countries that I had been to while at EIL and realize her long cherished desire of going to London, Paris and Switzerland, besides a nostalgic trip to Holland, where we had last gone 35 years back. After assessing that all was in order, it became an easy decision to take and join in. Thanks to Rahul, who was coordinating all the activities related to the booking with SOTC Lucknow, I had little to do other than accompany Vasu on some expeditions to shopping malls,etc. It would not be wise to go into the details of those tours as the time and space required would exceed that required to cover the Kuoni SOTC tour. Finally , around midnight on May 29, “-all our bags were packed and we were ready to go, waiting for the taxi to come and blow his horn, etc etc for we were leaving on a jet plane “ the next morning. Day 1 May 30 dawned bright, sunny and warm , subsequently to progress to hot , but the taxi did not turn up at the appointed hour-not a very encouraging portent. A couple of calls to the friendly neighbourhood taxi wallah, and he turned up at 07.15 hrs, so that we were at IGI Terminal 3 at the appointed hour to meet up with Rahul and the others. Well, after another 20 odd minutes of waiting, the six of us were together, checked in and were on our way. In the interim, we had managed to meet a few more group members. After all the formalities were completed we boarded flight EK 009 to Dubai, reaching our destination at about 13.00 hrs local time. A three hour break, most appropriately devoted to relaxing and we boarded flight EK-509 to London Gatwick arriving there at about 7.30 pm –could have been an hour earlier, but our departure was delayed by about an hour at Dubai. Once we got over the immigration and customs formalities, we made a beeline for the nearest SOTC representative we saw, only to learn that our names were not on his list. Help was close at hand in the form of Mr Khusro, who was filling in for our tour manager and after about an hour we were on the coach to our hotel in Wembley. There was still plenty of sunlight and the drive was quite interesting-plenty of greenery and flowers that looked like daisies and forget me nots ( remembered reading about them in school at Naini Tal). Besides some briefings about dos and don’ts, safety and security-we were told that there were three magic numbers that we would do well to remember and these were 6 (wake up) , 7 (breakfast) and 8 (departure) and considering that we had just reached London and may be somewhat tired etc the magic words for the next day would be 7,8,9..All of us had an Indian meal at the Blue Room restaurant, located across the road from the Holiday Inn , Wembley –ate well, pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food and after some chit chat, retired for the night with the comforting magic numbers of 7.8,9 in our minds. That in short, was the executive summary of day 1. We saw three airports T3 was very good, Dubai was absolutely fantastic –does not seem to stop growing, Gatwick was more like our small regional airports, looking almost dilapidated , but functioning very well. In addition , we saw the insides of two aircraft, one slightly old and the other quite new and of course had a preview of the English country side. All set for day 2-which hopefully would see some real “touristy”action. Lest I forget, please remember to make your food preference abundantly clear to the tour operator. The six of us had opted for Vegetarian Meal (AVML),but the operator in order to ensure that our veggie tenets were not violated in any manner whatsoever, put in a request for ‘Strictly Vegetarian) and we ended up having Vegan breakfast and Lunch. Not that the tummy complained, but the palates certainly did! Take care till the next dispatch. I don’t have any deadlines to meet, but want to make sure I get things done before everything gets erased from memory-strange, how one can recall many old time incidents, but has to really stretch to do the same for recent occurrences. It all began during a visit to Lucknow, when Rahul and Jaya ( Vasu’s brother and bhabhi, for those not in the know -don’t blame you for it!) showed us brochures of the tour and informed us that they had planned to sign on for this tour along with Uma di and Deepa ( Jaya’ elder and younger sister , respectively(don’t take it too hard if I hadn’t brought up this fact earlier!) and said that they would be very happy if we could also join them in this sojourn starting on May 30 and concluding on June 14. I had been to a number of the places listed in the itinerary, but mostly in transit or on business and it would be a different experience going there as a tourist, clad in jeans/shorts, tee shirts and walking shoes or floaters, with a bag slung across my shoulder to provide the necessary accessorial support, not that any sartorial issues were going to drive me to invest in the tour. It offered an excellent opportunity for Vasu to visit some of the countries that I had been to while at EIL and realize her long cherished desire of going to London, Paris and Switzerland, besides a nostalgic trip to Holland, where we had last gone 35 years back. After assessing that all was in order, it became an easy decision to take and join in. Thanks to Rahul, who was coordinating all the activities related to the booking with SOTC Lucknow, I had little to do other than accompany Vasu on some expeditions to shopping malls,etc. It would not be wise to go into the details of those tours as the time and space required would exceed that required to cover the Kuoni SOTC tour. Finally , around midnight on May 29, “-all our bags were packed and we were ready to go, waiting for the taxi to come and blow his horn, etc etc for we were leaving on a jet plane “ the next morning. Day 1 May 30 dawned bright, sunny and warm , subsequently to progress to hot , but the taxi did not turn up at the appointed hour-not a very encouraging portent. A couple of calls to the friendly neighbourhood taxi wallah, and he turned up at 07.15 hrs, so that we were at IGI Terminal 3 at the appointed hour to meet up with Rahul and the others. Well, after another 20 odd minutes of waiting, the six of us were together, checked in and were on our way. In the interim, we had managed to meet a few more group members. After all the formalities were completed we boarded flight EK 009 to Dubai, reaching our destination at about 13.00 hrs local time. A three hour break, most appropriately devoted to relaxing and we boarded flight EK-509 to London Gatwick arriving there at about 7.30 pm –could have been an hour earlier, but our departure was delayed by about an hour at Dubai. Once we got over the immigration and customs formalities, we made a beeline for the nearest SOTC representative we saw, only to learn that our names were not on his list. Help was close at hand in the form of Mr Khusro, who was filling in for our tour manager and after about an hour we were on the coach to our hotel in Wembley. There was still plenty of sunlight and the drive was quite interesting-plenty of greenery and flowers that looked like daisies and forget me nots ( remembered reading about them in school at Naini Tal). Besides some briefings about dos and don’ts, safety and security-we were told that there were three magic numbers that we would do well to remember and these were 6 (wake up) , 7 (breakfast) and 8 (departure) and considering that we had just reached London and may be somewhat tired etc the magic words for the next day would be 7,8,9..All of us had an Indian meal at the Blue Room restaurant, located across the road from the Holiday Inn , Wembley –ate well, pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food and after some chit chat, retired for the night with the comforting magic numbers of 7.8,9 in our minds. That in short, was the executive summary of day 1. We saw three airports T3 was very good, Dubai was absolutely fantastic –does not seem to stop growing, Gatwick was more like our small regional airports, looking almost dilapidated , but functioning very well. In addition , we saw the insides of two aircraft, one slightly old and the other quite new and of course had a preview of the English country side. All set for day 2-which hopefully would see some real “touristy”action. Lest I forget, please remember to make your food preference abundantly clear to the tour operator. The six of us had opted for Vegetarian Meal (AVML),but the operator in order to ensure that our veggie tenets were not violated in any manner whatsoever, put in a request for ‘Strictly Vegetarian) and we ended up having Vegan breakfast and Lunch. Not that the tummy complained, but the palates certainly did! Take care till the next dispatch. I don’t have any deadlines to meet, but want to make sure I get things done before everything gets erased from memory-strange, how one can recall many old time incidents, but has to really stretch to do the same for recent occurrences. Pictures will follow as I have to master the art of annexing them to a file!
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 18:21:17 +0000