Ending and Beginning

On February 20th at something like 4am we got up and headed for the Jaipur airport. We flew to Chandigarh, caught a taxi to Aman's house, packed up stuff (particularly shopping) we had abandoned there, hung out for a few hours, and then in the late afternoon got into a car to be driven to New Delhi. Some six hours later we got to New Delhi airport and learned security wouldn't let us through without our printed boarding passes. Naturally we only had digital copies. We found the office of the airline, got a printout, got through pre-security, checked bags, went through actual security, and at around 1am sleepily boarded our British Airways flight to London.

On reaching London we met Rod's cousin, headed to her place, and basically shut down for a couple of days. Travel in India wore us out, probably through the constant stress more than anything else, and our Jaipur to Chandigarh to New Delhi to London route finished us off. Lest we give the wrong impression, we had a great time in India and will absolutely go back (knowing what we are in for :)

In England we visited family a great deal, ate familiar food, had a family re-union with a bunch of very rarely seen relatives on Rod's side, and generally relaxed. After the stress of travel and living in China this was kind of like paradise. Signs in English, people who we can talk to without issue, familiar food, relatively little air pollution, family taking care of just about everything requiring any degree of thought, really no concerns at all! We did squeeze in some minor touristy things (The Mousetrap, etc) but this final leg of the trip was really about recovering energy levels and visiting long unvisited family. During this time the camera was apparently almost totally unused so no endless stream of photos this time.

On March 1st we flew from London to Reykjavik to Seattle to Vancouver and finally got home. This substantially longer route home was less than half the price of flying direct and covering less miles consuming less jet fuel.

Vancouver naturally welcomed us home with some splendid weather :)

On arriving home we settled into Pavan's parents house as we gave up our apartment when we left for China and will not likely have a place of our own until our construction project (demolishing and rebuilding an older duplex) is done. Oh and we're getting married July 24th. So we'll be somewhat busy.