2014 has been an eventful year for me, having celebrated my 40th birthday (see the previous blog!) with a surprise visit to Malta and, at the end of the year, I gave up living the life of a singleton, and married my (then) girlfriend, Sarah.
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| The Mrs and I - Sarah checking to make sure I signed the register! |
During the last blog, I alluded to a secret destination for our honeymoon; Sarah was left with the small details of arranging a wedding and reception (which went very well!), and it was left to me to sort out where we were going on our honeymoon. For a bit of fun, I decided to keep it secret from Sarah, and then reveal it as a surprise Christmas present!
Unfortunately, due to a lack of annual leave on my part, it meant we couldn't really jet off straight after the wedding, but with it being a winter wedding, it meant that in order for us to get some sun, we would have had to have traveled a lot further than we are going.
Anyway, I think it is safe to say that the title gives away the destination, but for the Huntingdon Regional College readers of this blog, we are going to India. The lengths I will go to in order to get a decent curry knows no bounds!! Although I have since found out that most curries in the UK are actually cooked by Bangladeshi people rather than Indians, but this revelation has not lessened my enthusiasm for trying authentic cuisine.
The itinerary for our honeymoon is fairly hectic. We are going away for almost 3 weeks, and we spend the first two weeks in Rajasthan, visiting the various fort cities up there; Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur, as well as seeing Delhi and Agra (aka the Taj Mahal!), before going south to Goa for a week of chilling out in tropical climes. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this holiday will not be as windy and chilly as The Gambia, and the initial signs are promising, we should be going there at the height of the dry season, where it should be hotter than the sauce in a McDonalds apple pie.
So, to immerse ourselves in the the culture, I have bought Sarah a couple of Lonely Planet guides for Christmas which will no doubt prove invaluable when we get "in country", whilst I am getting acquainted with the nuances of Indian life by watching Octopussy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Jungle Book!!
We have to go and get some visas, and do some of the less interesting administrative bits and pieces. Rather annoyingly a visa to India is £92 each these days. It used to be a pittance, but then the UK border agency decided to be a bit more bureaucratic in their checking of Indian passport holders and so this is a retaliatory measure (as far as I can tell!). On the plus side though, I think we have all the necessary jabs to go there, so don't need any expensive medications prior to leaving. Rajasthan is dry, so there is no malaria risk up there, but I think we will need to take some tablets for when we get to Goa, where our hotel is beautifully located on a lagoon (i.e large pool of stagnant water (i.e. place where mosquitoes can breed)). To be fair though I think that is doing the hotel a massive injustice as it is widely regarded as the finest hotel in South Goa, so can't imagine it wouldn't treat its lagoons with insect repellent.
Anyway, this is just a post to say another series of posts are coming up in the not too distant future, so stay tuned!!
