Namaste

After lots of little bumps and plenty of phone calls, I finally got to buy my ticket to India on Friday afternoon. (And not with my credit card either!) And for a bit of a different experience.

Originally when it was discussed that I would be traveling to India, it was because of a conference in Delhi for a few days. The conference is in partnership with Air India and in going, the air ticket would be free, I'd be staying at hotels in the city for free, and would have most of my meals provided for. Then for either a few days before and some days afterwards, I would be using our ground operator to try to see the major sites and do some hotel inspections for as cheap as possible.

I emailed our operator the plans to get his thoughts and he emailed back that the conference is pretty lame, but he'd help me as needed. However, he said that they were already planning a familiarization trip for some other agents from a different company and all of the rooms were already comped and he was more than happy to have me tag along. We'd have to pay for international and internal airfare and that's it.

So, pricewise, the two were pretty even, I guess. Air India would only let me go one or two days before the conference and I'd have to leave three days later, which really wouldn't give time to see much. So we started contacting people about air tickets on our own and after some back-and-forth deals, we finally got the best possible flight (nonstop on the way home!) for the dates for the fam trip through the ground operator.

This trip is going to be amazing! We're staying at our properties (including a couple of hotels that I am dying to see) and I'll be hitting all the highlights in Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur, and Varanasi. I'm going to be gone for ten days and leave in less than four weeks!

Another co-worker is going to Australia and we've already made lists for the other to bring back. =) I'm excited!!!!!!!! Sooooooo excited!!!!!!!! And I hope to make the company proud by actually asking the right questions, dressing properly, and generally not embarrassing myself.