DON’T RUIN YOUR HOLIDAY

A holiday is a most needed break to recharge your batteries and it does not come easily. You need to leave your work, the comfort of your home, the predictability of your routine and embark upon an unknown destination in search of something new. This is just too important an event to be left to chance. Given a choice you would like to plan it meticulously from home to home. But there are occasions when your best planned holidays go bust and you may not be able to do a thing about it and only end up feeling cheated. A holiday turning into a flop show is the last thing you and your family needs.

When things start going bad during a holiday I classify them in three broad heads – minor irritants, bad with the good and major glitches.

Minor Irritants:

I do not mind the minor irritants, and in face I have learned to enjoy them too. Thus loud music, party people in the next room, lumpy bed, lousy coffee and poolside cabanas all taken at 10 AM are all game. Costly internet data, hotel rooms facing noisy streets and conducted tours costlier than promised are all a part of the game. These niggles are pretty much going to happen wherever and whenever you go and I never complain. I have in fact stayed up the whole night with football fans half my age in Rio de Janeiro lamenting their World Cup loss and lost my way back to my hotel in Moscow and ended up spending the night in a metro station with two Germans with negligible familiarity with the English language!  These were unique experiences, few others can boast of!

The bad with the good:

In this category are:  

Binging with the locals

1. Getting lost: Getting lost in a new city is part of the travel parcel. This can be graded on a scale from ‘losing one’s direction’ right through to ‘having no idea where you are’. Google maps can help but not always. When we get lost in a new place, our adrenaline levels increase, we turn into Sherlock Holmes and try to figure out how to get back on track. You never know, you might bump into something worthwhile, like a cozy pub, or an interesting street performer in a suburb where locals hang out. These will never be on the tourist map!
2. Getting on the wrong train or bus: How many times have you had to check the train map, run your finger along the colourful direction of its tracks to make sure you are headed the right way to your destination? Sometimes this becomes so much harder, especially when you are in a country that has a different alphabet to what you are used to. But then again, it gives you a great opportunity to get off the train, pop your head out of the station and have a look around for the same benefits as getting lost!
3. Trying to match the locals, particularly with the drinks: You’ve had a few vodka martinis before, right? Well, if for example, you are in Russia, your previous martinis do not make you an expert vodka drinker, so it is probably not a wise idea to keep up with the locals. The hangover may ruin your next day’s travel plans but on the flip side if you binge together you make new friends for life!

Major glitches:

What can truly turn your holiday into hell is mostly stuff that is mostly avoidable.

Thomas Cook goes belly up

1. Accidents that put you in hospital: People do stuff on holidays they never do back home. Ride camels, horses, pilot quad bikes over precipitous terrain. Ride scooters without a license or a helmet in places where traffic rules are a little more elastic than you're used to, where traffic might be dense and roads narrow and potholed – and you wonder why you've ended up in hospital? I have seen a friend’s sail/bike trip through the Croatian Islands come to an abrupt end with fractured ribs and wrist when he had a nasty fall from his bike. He was not a regular biker and it was a bad choice.
2. Traveling without travel insurance: No one likes insurance, no one thinks they will need insurance, but it is an important thing to purchase before your trip. Many people omit this from their planning as they think they will save a buck or two. The airline may lose your bags, you may fracture your toe and need medical advice, or you may be pick pocketed. Insurance will come to your rescue.
3. Airline or tour operator goes bust: Tour operators and airlines go down the fiscal rabbit hole. When they do they sink faster than the Titanic. As more than 100,000 holidaymakers who paid for their dream holiday with Thomas Cook found out when the company declared bankruptcy, leaving them stranded overseas. Don't expect help from your travel insurer since policies offer no protection against travel operators' insolvency. I honestly do not know how to handle this one except paying through the nose to return home.
4. Getting arrested: You may feel it is difficult but if you are unaware of local traditions, dress codes and customs then even the bikini you wear to your neighborhood beach back home can get you arrested. China, USA, UAE, Thailand do not believe in giving any benefit of doubt to the tourists and ignorance of law is not an excuse. Dress code, drugs and infringements of immigration laws usually result in tourist arrests.
5. Civil unrest: There are many areas in the world where advisories recommend you don’t travel to because of the dangers they hold for travellers. So travelling to war zones – Syria, Iraq is not recommended but the so called safe heavens for tourists like Hong Kong and Barcelona have turned red hot of late. But if you choose to go to these unsafe places not only can you find cheaper deals in travel and stay, but once you get there, locals tend to be very friendly when they see tourists and will go out of their way to help you. So if you are planning a visit to U.K around October 21, 2019 be prepared for some Brexit related glitches. If you get caught up and your plans are affected, your travel insurer might cover any extra costs you've incurred provided you were inadvertently trapped. If there are riots happening and you chose to go, don't expect too much sympathy.
6. Weather events: Too much rain, too little rain, storms, hot winds, volcanoes, typhoons – what Mother Nature throws down can play havoc with your holidays. Cyclone Feni destroyed almost all the beach resorts in Puri in the state of Odisha in India and the visitors had terrifying stories to tell! Over summer, passengers on some European river cruises were offloaded from their vessels and shunted onto buses when water flows were too low to float their boat. Small and less cataclysmic weather events that force a change of plans – a cloudy day that prevents you from taking a mountain hike, or rain that cancels a day's outing – I classify them with minor irritants.
7. Baggage lost: On most occasions this turns out to be a minor irritant, reaching you within a day or two, but if the bags have your special clothes or work related documents you may miss out big time. The monetary value would be covered by most travel insurance policies but the occasion value will remain either irreplaceable or may cost you a fortune.
8. Strikes: France is notorious for them. Their transport workers – railway, buses, and airplanes are all infected by the ‘strike’ virus. Air France occasionally catches the disease, as do Italian transport workers who tend to strike on Fridays and Mondays. The risk is mainly confined to European countries with strong unions.
9. Not checking if you need a visa: Believe me, this happens with many travelers. The last thing you want is to get off an 11 hour flight, only to find you are not allowed into the country you are heading to. Some countries allow you to buy visas at the border / airport / seaport, but this will depend what passport you hold. If you are a multi-passport holder, you may be able to pick and choose which one to use. So be very sure about visa requirement before you go. Pakistan and Bangladesh give Indians city specific visas, so you must be sure where all your visa allows you to travel.
10. Frauds: be very careful while you exchange your currency and do so in official outlets. Promise of better in dubious places may cost you dearly. Counterfeit currency can land you in jail. Avoid all smooth talking good Samaritans and self proclaimed helpful tour guides.

Pro democracy protesters in Hong Kong Airport 

Transport union strike in Paris

Travel is fun, and let it be just that. Plan it well, but don’t get obsessed by your plans and disheartened by minor irritants. Enjoy them, as they become your travel stories to tell. Be careful and avoid the major glitches and be sure to start planning for the next holiday as soon as you are back home from one.