Preparations progressing

Sunday morning and the house is in chaos.  In general terms having Hayley and James stay removes so much pressure than to have the house shut up through 2 months of winter; we would like to leave them in relative comfort and order, though.  They are travelling today and tomorrow, but as I type this a gritter has gone down the road while hail batters the window and I wonder if they'll make it tomorrow evening as planned with heavy snow and gales forecast.  Meanwhile, we'll carry on decluttering and sorting stuff to take which should be simple, but trying to pack lightly yet also for a wedding and meeting up with (and sometimes staying close to) multiple friends throws up challenges for us.  It's been a while since we did anything similar and we are getting older - crikey, we seem to need a bag just for meds!  We shouldn't need warm clothes while we're away, but Mizoram could be below 10C into the evening.

Here's our provisional schedule:
Wednesday 17th Jan - Fly from Kirkwall to Bengaluru via Edinburgh and Heathrow
Stay as guests of old friends in a conference centre until ...

Thursday 25th Jan - fly to Kolkata
Stay at the Saturday Club as guests of Jenny's oldest friend - her daughter's wedding is over the weekend.

Friday 2nd February - Fly to Aizawl in Mizoram
After this it gets a bit vague.  We're certainly planning on meeting up with old friends here and a school we've had previous involvement with, but haven't explored the state much beyond Aizawl and would like to do some travelling around.  Probably have a few weeks then start heading back overland to Kolkata, maybe via a national park or two.  We'll want to be back in Kolkata early March to spend time with folks and head out to Jen's old home of Serampore College.

We're due home on Tuesday 12th March from Kolkata via Mumbai and Heathrow.

Looking at the map it's clear we're missing so much out.  Despite out past visits and this one (over five months in total) there is so much of India we'll never see, but it is such a vast and varied country.  We once met some folks who were "doing" Europe in five days; I would say India is less homogenous than Europe so we're clearly not going to return knowing all about India, just a little more surface scratched.



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