Australia Travelogue - Travel Day

Australia Travel Diary

March 2019 - Its time to fly

It was time for us to fly to a new continent "Australia". This was our first trip to another country and boy did we choose a continent. The reason for the travel was my cousins wedding. Post the wedding, we had plans to visit various other cities in Australia namely Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. The start to the trip was not that straight forward as it looked. Let me take you back in time to explain how we started.

Leaves📝📝📚📚💻💻💸💸

I had saved enough leaves to enjoy the trip rather than worry about returning quickly for work. I applied for 21 days leave which were available in my leave balance. Leaves were approved after lot of deliberation and also the fact that in my office team, I was the only one who had not gone out of country. My wife too had to go through the same process of justification for leaves. At last, both got the leaves approved. That is the first hurdle we crossed.

Visas & Ticket booking🎫🎫🚩🌏🌏

It wasn't just me and my wife who were travelling but the entire family of aunt, parents, cousin, brother-in-law and niece. My niece was the youngest of the family bunch. For visa's we needed invitation letters from my uncle. These letter had to be addressed to individual families. We had to do a lot of to and fro on the letters content. As soon as the letters were addressed and submitted, we applied for visa's and booked tickets simultaneously. Tickets if booked in advance are a little cheaper. My brother-in-law had to apply for his visa later than all of us as he worked on cruise ship. This scenario kept the entire families (Indian and Australian) on tender hooks as he applied with less than a month left for the travel. In the meanwhile we began with shopping for the wedding.

Shopping🎁👕👗🎀

We were travelling to a foreign land for the first time. We were on a budget as well, hence our shopping had to be in-expensive yet trendy. Our family abroad had given us the dress code for the wedding and other programs and we had to shop accordingly in order to match the wear for the wedding. We shopped for the clothes and dresses in our local areas and shops. These kept our shopping budgets within limits. We travelled between Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad for our shopping. My brother-in-law and me shopped for the suits on the last night before the travel day with the trousers stitched and delivered to us on the afternoon of the travel day.

Nervous travel day🚖⚡⛽🛫🛫

Suitcases packed, waiting for the airport drop car to arrive, we woke up on travel day with urgency. Since we were to leave for about a month, we had to clean and shut the refrigerator for good. Finish any edible food and throw out perishable items, pay off the home maid and clean the house and leave no taps open. I called my sister to check on their visas but to my astonishment, their visas were yet to arrive. My aunt had received her visa. She was worried and disappointed that they may have to postpone their travel by hopefully another week. After having a call with her I called our airport travel cab and cancelled the second car we had booked. An hour passed and my sister called me again and she ecstatic that they had received the visas and will be travelling, I broke the news to her that I had cancelled the second car and now they were in soup to get a travel car in less than an hour left to travel to the airport. I told her that she need not worry about the travel docs as I had taken prints for them. Our travel car arrived and we left on time at around 1300hrs, some 1.30hrs ahead of the other family. We had to travel around 130kms to Mumbai for our flight to Australia. With travel unpredictable with traffic on roads and the car conditions we left a good 9hrs ahead of the flight time. In India it is advised to reach the airport 5hrs before the actual departure of the flight. Halfway to the airport I enquired with by sister on where they had reached and she told me that they had just left town towards the airport. We reached Mumbai at around 5pm and were caught in rush hour traffic with people returning to their homes. I was in constant touch with my sister and was guiding her which way she can take to avoid traffic. Finally at around 18.30hrs on the 19th of March, my family reached the Mumbai airport, we paid off the driver and waited for my sisters family to arrive.

Airport fun before we flew🛫🛫🌆🌆🌆

My family waited for about an hour and then my sister arrived all huffing and puffing as they had to run around a lot and go through a emotional roller-coaster with the visa situation.😇😢💪Finally the entire family was at one place and with one destination in mind, Sydney, Australia where we were to reach the next day after a 14hr flight with a stop over at Hong Kong for more than 3 hrs. We all checked and in and went through the security check. I bumped into a cricket superstar from Afghanistan - Rahmat Shah Zurmatai. No one recognized him even though cricket being a religion in India, but I did recognize him at the airport. Congratulated him on Afghanistan's latest test win against Ireland and requested for a picture. He was travelling to Kabul to be with his family. Afghanistan play most of their cricket in India in Dharmshala, Himachal Pradesh as their country doesn't have the cricket infrastructure yet. We reached the boarding gate and then stopped for a cup of coffee, some milk and food for my niece. We called our uncle in Australia and informed him that we were about to board the plane and will be next speaking to him from Hong Kong.

Selfie with Rahmat Shah Zurmatai - Afghan Cricket Player

Stopover at Hong Kong🛬🛬🛄🛄🏮

We took-off from Mumbai on 18th March 2019 at 0100 hrs in late night and landed in Hong Kong for our stop-over at 0630hrs next day. Hong Kong is 2.30hrs ahead of India, hence it was like waking up in the middle of the night and alighting to catch the next flight. We travelled by Cathay Pacific both ways and found it a good and comfortable flight. After our security checks we then went to our boarding gate and had our some morning snacks. Meanwhile clicked some pics at the Airport.

At Hong Kong Airport after alighting

Early Morning at Hong Kong Airport

There is a snake in my boot at the Hong Kong Airport

To Infinity and Beyond

I had tried to fill in all travel information on the Cathay Pacific site but there was some information missing about my wife and the Cathay Pacific staff was searching for her desperately and wanted her passport, this made the family a little bemused as to what was happening, but everything was normal as they just wanted her passport details. After having tea and coffee and some basic snacks we boarded the next flight to Sydney Australia, we took off at around 1030hrs in the morning and were to reach Sydney Airport at 1930hrs. This is the longest part of the journey so spent my time watching movies and reading and having all the food provided by the Cathay staff. Clicked some pics while in the air while approaching Australia.

Selfie with family on our way to Sydney

Entering Australian Mainland off the coast of Darwin I guess

Unique Cloud Formation

Unique view of clouds and mainland Australia

Arrival at Sydney🛬🛬🛄🛄🌏🌏

We landed in Sydney and hour earlier than scheduled at 1930hrs. As soon as we landed and connected to the airport Wifi, called my uncle that we have landed an hour earlier. They were in the parking area when we landed, so we didn't have to wait for long. After all the necessary security checks we had finally arrived in Sydney Australia. We arrived on the day of Holi which is celebrated in India with colours and bonfire.

Family Selfie @ Sydney Airport

We reached uncle's place after travelling for another 40 mins to Glenfield, Sydney Suburb. After freshening up we lit the Holi bonfire, had dinner and then rested as it was already passed midnight.

Selfie with family at the Holi bonfire in Sydney

So after travelling for 14hrs straight we finally were 6hrs ahead of time we would have spent in India. There were some great celebration and travels to come ahead. See you in the next one.