We had big plans for travel in 2020. We actually made one trip to Southeast Asia in January 2020 that included Bangkok , Northern Thailand and a Mekong River cruise from there to Luang Prabang. Just before leaving Bangkok for our return back home on January 26, 2020 we started reading and hearing stories about an epidemic that was sweeping across China but we had no idea of what was really happening.
On that journey home, we changed planes in Hong Kong and while in the airport there we heard announcements every 15-20 minutes that any travelers arriving from Wuhan were required to check in with health authorities and avoidance would be punished under penalty of law.
We also had plans for (an April 2020) textile trail trip to Uzbekistan and being in the same general part of the world tack on a return visit to India and then we were going to take friends from Australia on a month-long tour of Mexico, which was to include a stop in Oaxaca for The Day of The Dead in October.
But in March 2020 about 3-weeks before we were to depart for Uzbekistan, virtually every international flight in the world was cancelled. Initially we had thought the Covid Pandemic would be over in 2-3 months, so we delayed our trip until June 2020, then to August 2020 and then to January 2021 and so on and so on.
At that point trying to plan a trip that would require flying on (the privately owned Russian airline) S-7, which was our connection to Tashkent became virtually impossible, so we scrambled a bit and decided to drop Uzbekistan for the time being and replace it with Sri Lanka, another place we have wanted to visit for a long while. So, we were all set for a visit to Kerala and Sri Lanka.
But then 5-weeks before our early August 2022 departure for Colombo the then Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe announced to the world that the economy of Sri Lanka had “completely collapsed,” and the country had no foreign currency to buy and import fuel or food. The thought of going on a 2-week drive around a country with very limited fuel supplies, frequent electricity blackouts and a population struggling to feed itself didn’t seem like the best scenario for a relaxing holiday.
At the same time, we read that India had rebounded from the worst of Covid and was now open for tourism, so we made a quick pivot and dusted off our original plan from 2020. With the help of our travel agent friend Bindu at Breakaways we quickly reworked our trip and a few weeks later were off to Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
It wasn’t easy but we had finally managed to fight through all the minutia and uncertainty associated with Covid and started traveling again.
Our itinerary took us from RDU to Boston Logan to Doha on a Qatar Air A-359, which allowed us to experience the Qatar Q-Suites business class product for the first time. It would have to rank among the most comfortable air seats we’ve ever enjoyed and was matched by excellent service.
From Doha we took a late-night flight into Thiruvananthapuram, more commonly known as Trivandrum and the capital of the Indian state of Kerala arriving there around 2:45 am on a weekday morning. And we were ready to travel so that’s just what we did.
We spent a little over 2-weeks in Kerala and then over the next 4-weeks visited The Maldives, Phuket, Chiang Rai, Chiang Rai, Sukothai and Bangkok making this the longest trip we’ve ever taken.
You can read reports about this trip through the link above or by clicking on the appropriate buttons in the top banner.