As I mentioned before, we flew Oman Airlines from London Heathrow to Chennai. This being just before the holiday season, the tickets were a little cheap, but the flights were full. This is the first time we flew Oman and my feedback is mostly positive. The flights were clean, staff were friendly, Muscat airport - where we changed flights - was good and the Indian food served on the flight was not bad. The one negative thing was that they decided to advance our flight from Heathrow to Muscat by an hour, cancel our onward flight from Muscat to Chennai, booked us in a hotel in Muscat for a day and made a reservation for us so that we arrived at Chennai the day after - all without telling us! No emails, phone calls or texts.
I stumbled upon this trivial thing by accident when I printed out my itinerary from their website the weekend before our travel. Had I chosen to print out the confirmation email, I would have been blissfully unaware of this. Anyway, I spent a frantic half day getting us all booked on the flight the day before and they graciously(!) agreed to do this change for free.
Wife was getting her Indian passport renewed few months ago, after we had bought the tickets. Carefully thinking over for five years and realizing that life as my better half can be tolerated, she decided to have her surname changed (as is our custom, her new surname is the same as my first name, just like our son). We have spent the last two months changing her name everywhere she has an account - UK govt, banks, insurance, utilities, doctor office, grocery store. We tried to change her name in her flight tickets to India, but they wanted to charge us £150 for that privilege. We decided to take our chances and travel with her old name on the ticket (her old passport is with us still and has not expired yet). Thankfully, we did not have any issues - in fact, no one even questioned us about the discrepancy.
We landed at Chennai two days before Deepavali, a traditional Hindu festival celebrated all over India. We celebrated it with family and burst a lot of crackers. We were a little concerned how the boy would react to all the noise and loud firecrackers for two days, but he really enjoyed it. We celebrated his first birthday with a religious ceremony with friends and family. We then visited our family temple near Trichy and had our son's hair shaved off, meant as an offering to the God. He cried during the process, but settled down soon after that and we all liked his new look.
We then went to Trivandrum to visit my wife's side. This is in the state of Kerala, whose tourist brochures market it as "God's own country" and for a reason. We did a little bit of shopping and then went to places within the city.
Then we spent a whole day and night in a boat house near Aleppey, which is about two hours of drive from Trivandrum. The boat took us through the backwaters of Kerala and we spent the time relaxing and just taking in the grand scenery around us. The food was traditional Kerala fare - spicy and very very delicious.
Then we came back to Chennai, did a little bit more shopping. The boy got some more time to play with his cousins. We visited a mall called Express Avenue in the heart of Chennai. We were amazed at the size of the mall and the kind of stores available there.
After spending two weeks at close to 30C (86F - probably as cold as it gets in South India), we are back to freezing temperatures of South England. The northern parts of the country has been getting some snowfall in the past four days. We have been warned of a snowfall in this part, but I am yet to see anything significant.
