Monday, January 09, 2012

South Africa - Prologue to Travelogue


Prologue -
Someone has rightly said that the best time to go on a vacation is when you come back from one. I am sure it must have been an avid Indian traveller who coined that one. Given the fact that we Indians over indulge in sightseeing to the extent that we exhaust ourselves to an extreme state of tiredness ...its really not hard to believe. However, this time I would like to refute this statement. Our South Africa & Botswana sojourn though an action packed and eventful road trip, my mind and body were as much fully energised and charged on my return as much as they were before going on the holiday. And one more thing was sure that this totally fascinating holiday experience was going to remain etched in my memory forever.

Background
It had been exactly 2 years in the month of July 2011, since Ashish and me had both gone on a long holiday. You can say we were truly holiday starved. Every time an opportunity for a holiday came walking to our doorstep, circumstances would slam the door on its face.
Most times it was quarter closing at work, few times it was an important event in pipeline, couple of times it was year end pressures, one time it was a new job and so 'no leave' situation or otherwise it was just something else which seemed always more important than going on a holiday. These undesirable situations always reared their ugly head and foiled our holiday plans right at its infancy stage.

One day we both decided enough is enough. We had reached a point of 'We have to go on a holiday, come what may!' situation.


Wanting to not let go of this precious moment, I immediately rushed to the corner of the room to pull out the 2011 calendar from top of the cupboard. Charged with excitement and with great gusto, I rolled out the unused calendar in front of us ...to a cloud of light dust.
Lo and behold! As if in a magical mist what emerged before us was a travel company's promotional calendar sprinkled with scenic pics of some really exotic destinations all over it.
Was it serendipity at work? We don't know. Looking at the those desirable images we got even more lascivious and our holiday hunger skyrocketed. Lustily, I grabbed a pen and paper readying for the task at hand, put the land line of the hook, put the cell phones on silent mode and we immediately got down to the task at hand.....'Project Holiday 2011'.
Just the thought of looking forward to a holiday was getting us excited and happy. As we were working on the dates, I realised that our fingers swiftly moved from the month of August to the next leaf September then forward to October and then November, knocking off all limited possibilities we had of a long break during those months. Dreadfully we reached the last month of 2011. We stared wistfully at December for a very long time as if praying to the calendar to take mercy on us poor souls and grant us our long deserved break soon. Both of us, after much mulling on our work obligations and expected commitments figured out that December it was going to be. Yippeee!..Here we come December. Now we just needed to take official approvals from our respective offices.


However the joy was short lived, just as suddenly it hit us that December is the most expensive month for a long break when the hotel tariffs go through the roof, all holiday spots get crowded and flights seats difficult to book. But what the hell, we were still in July and we had many months to go to do our planning, bookings, visas etc. We should be able to get some good deals with advanced planning and reservations.....Or so we thought!

South Africa & Botswana was always our unanimous choice! My aunt (maushi)and uncle who have settled there for the last 28 years had been inviting us for a very very long time and more so my mom and dad because they had not been there before unlike me.
My aunt was thrilled to hear about our plans and immediately asked us to start the visa processing and ticket bookings. We were also maha excited that finally our plans were shaping up.

So all set then..2 weeks to be spent in South Africa and Botswana during Christmas and New Year holidays. Awesome! Just the thought of going on a family holiday finally, had me excited like a little child waiting for her schools to close and vacation to begin . As they say, the excitement of holidays begins as soon as one plans to go on one.

But guess what July..August..September...came and went by. The calendar page leaves just flew by... just like they show in good ol' Hindi movies. Both of us got so busy neck deep in work commitments that we didnt even attempt to look into our holiday schedule. Then one fine weekend in October as I lay on my couch watching my favourite anchor Samantha Brown excitedly talking about her African safari, it suddenly pounced on me! What else, but my exalted holiday anxiety. There were only 2 months to go and we had not worked on our Visas, the flight bookings nor the itinerary.
What happened after that passed by like a big blur. Things moved so fast then onwards that when I finally caught myself breathing was when we had put the final nail in the coffin. What I mean of course that all bags were packed, locked and ready for the Chattrapati Shivaji International, Mumbai airport.

It was time for us to say Goodbye India...and Hello South Africa!