It has certainly been a long 12 nights/13 days. We left Jaipur at 8.30 am, hit a gem ‘palace’ on the way out of the city (pursie peeked out of pocket briefly but there wasn’t enough air in the showroom for the massive Indian ego of the salesman and pursie... so away he went). The only thing worse that barrelling along the back roads of India is caning down the expressway from Jaipur to Delhi and having life flash before your eyes almost constantly. Life. Camels. Overloaded trucks. Even an elephant (though to be fair, that was before we left Jaipur proper). Insane traffic. Dirt. More dirt. Speeding, swerving and carrying on. If you value your life, never ever drive in a country that believes in reincarntion. If you’re poor and miserable enough... there is seriously nothing to live for and they’ve no concern at all about arriving late (or even dead, on time).

But, we made it. Obviously. The final night hotel in New Delhi shows what happens at the end of tour after the guide drops you off and high tails it into the sunset. The restaurant was vegan/vegetarian and didn’t even have an alcohol licence. When it became clear that a bunch of Brits/Aussies and Kiwis were not happy about this at all they sneakily poured the beer into glasses in the kitchen and wrapped serviettes around the glasses to hide the beer. Daft. On so many different levels. Breakfast featured sweet fanny adams, but did offer milk, yoghurt and honey... so not Vegan at all - but didn’t offer eggs... with the excuse that they were a pure-vegetarian hotel. Utter rubbish way to finish a tour - but the bed was comfortable. Can’t say we were impressed with the fingernail clippings in the electric kettle... and therefore in our morning cup of tea. Staff on the front desk said they’d mention the issue to housekeeping - Good on you Hotel Jitivesh, New Delhi. Keeping those standards up for India as a whole then.

We were therefore as happy as clams to depart on the morning of the 23rd for our transfer to the airport which went off without a hitch. We had some Indian currency left and ended up hitting the duty free booze shop in order to take some Malibu and Baileys for a well deserved holiday to Sri Lanka.

The flight on Air India also went off without a hitch and the extra $20/1000 rupiah we’d paid for the exit row seats in Row 9 were undoubtedly worth every penny. Air India basically charges for all seats forward of Row 25. Exit rows cost the most, followed by aisle seats, window seats and middle seats (though why anyone would pay anything at all to be jammed into a middle seat beats us). Our friend, who was also joining the Sri Lanka tour along with us, hadn’t bothered with paying for a seat and was in Row 26... peeved as anything that we’d apparently drunk the bar dry of the white wine as the drinks trolley had run out by the time it got to the back of the plane. We admit to enjoying some beer, white wine and a whiskey... which helped pass the time, as did the chicken curry and extra fixings for lunch. Who knew... 3 hours 30 minutes just flies by when you have enough liquids on hand to take all the edges off. Hydration is absolutely vital at 36,000 feet you know.

We aririved in Colombo about 4 pm and one of our checked bags was off the carousel at about 4.08 pm... The other one kept us guessing until it finally swung around the corner at 4.30 pm... The driver was thinking we’d gotten lost. A cruel joke since we were among the first folks off the plane and through immigration.

We could not believe Colombo and Sri Lanka. From the ridiculous to the sublime, we sounded unhinged on the hour’s drive from the airport to our beachfront hotel. Literally unhinged. All we could do was rave about the cleanliness of everything. The roads were clean (and in one piece), the streets were clean, the air was clean, the minibus was clean - and on and on we went. Loopy. The arrival in the hotel, OZO Colombo was smooth and the view over the ocean from our room was divine. It was all we could do to have a wash and a change of clothes and head up to the roof top bar for sunset, a cocktail and burgers for dinner. Farewell sacred cows... you go ambling around the street in these parts and you’ll end up in a burger... It was utter magic. It’s not that Sri Lanka is free by any means, but A$50 for two people for a couple of cocktails and gourmet burgers in a trendy rooftop bar overlooking the sun setting into the ocean seemed positively cheap to us. And did we mention it was clean?

Still - an early night, packed and ready to start our tour-proper of Sri Lanka. We were loving it already.