Since I've been traveling for work almost continuously since March and have been extremely busy otherwise as well, I thought a small family vacation to my home town (Palghat, Kerala) would be a great respite. I packed up the wife and kid and went to Bangalore first where I had a 3-day SQL Server 2008 BI session to conduct. After that I sent them off to Palghat while I went to Pune to conduct an architecture design session for a client. Finally on Saturday I took a flight from Pune to Coimbatore and landed up home completely beat.

I was supposed to attend a cousin's engagement at Calicut on Monday, but I bailed - not really out of choice but because first my son, Akshat fell ill with an upset tummy and soon after so did I. My parents went off to Calicut and returned the same day.

I then planned to at least get some rejuvenating Ayurvedic massages done - but not only did it start raining like mad - making travel well nigh impossible - but my dad came down with a flu. The worst was yet to come - Neeta (my wife) suddenly developed an extreme case of pollen allergy due to the thick vegetation around. We were then constantly on phone with her doctor here and getting new medicines to give her. Since she was completely breathless and in pain, I had to take two decisions quickly - one, move out of my parents' house and into a hotel room with air conditioning and two, to cut short our vacation and reach back home in Gurgaon. So I had to cancel my non-refundable tickets and buy new ones for the next day and fly back.

So, in the end not only did I not get a vacation (which I still think is very well deserved/required), but instead got a whole bunch of tension and a good amount of money spent. What a waste!

Tags: rant, personal, travel
Categories: Personal | Rant | Travel