Around the world in 1 Lakh Bucks

Sensing that the Indian middle-class traveller may be more peripatetic this year, the travel agencies are all geared up for the summer season ahead. The deals are many: Vatican Travels is offering Egypt and a cruise along the Nile for eight nights and nine days for Rs 43,000 per adult while Armaan Tours can give you two nights in Athens and three nights on a Greek island for Rs 60,000 per person. Mamta Pall, General Manager, Business Development, Select Vacations says, “A week in Vienna, Salzburg and Innsbruck will come to Rs 60,000 per adult and airlines are offering upto 70 percent discounts for small children. You could see Italy too – Rome, Florence, Venice and more – for Rs.65,000 per adult.”

Europe comes slightly more expensive – but even here, most travel companies can offer you and your family at least a week in Holland, Italy, Austria, France, Switzerland and Germany, for about two lakh rupees.

Or you can do the exotic and get off the beaten track. A Kenyan Safari with a few days in South Africa will come to at least a lakh and a half for a couple – but if you take a shorter trip, you could take your child along for another Rs 50,0000. Moroccan coffee is picking up according to travel agents this year and Spain and Egypt too are hot destinations for 2005.

Package Tour vs Do-it-Yourself Holidays
Contrary to popular perception, travel companies don’t seem to be out to bleed you white. In fact, smart takers opt for schemes like Cox and Kings’ discounted packag e – where one adult package allows for a fifty percent discount on the second person, with a child thrown in for free. Most of those who have gone say it’s a dream deal – no hassles getting a visa, no booking tickets, no reading up reams and reams on hotel bookings and currency changing, local transport and where to go. Free breakfasts, transportation, arranged accommodation and sightseeing tours are all part of the great holiday package. The only extras include eating out and shopping.

The downsides are there too – crammed days and nights and Indian food. Frequent traveller Asha Kumar says, “All of them feed you these typical Indian meals of chana and matar-paneer which you feel you must eat since you’ve paid for them. I’d rather go on my own and see a bit of the place. If you take local transport and book your accommodation wisely, it actually works out to a little less.’’

Investment consultant Ayesha Kapur who went to Malaysia with three friends and two children through Select Travels last years differs: “The entire trip came to Rs 2.14 lakh for the group. We spent three days in Kuala Lumpur, two days in Genting, three days in Singapore and stopped in Sri Lanka on the way back.” She adds, “If we’d have done it on our own it would have come to Rs.70,000 per person – and with all flights, taxes, four star hotel accommodation, pickups, coupons for different parks and safaris as well as breakfast, it was a great deal.”

Most travellers are agency-faithful. Having taken a cruise to the Bahamas last year with SOTC, and their Europe package the year before, medical specialist Lalit Kumar is taking his family to the East Coast of the United States on another package this June. “It works out to be much more viable and definitely hassle-free,” says Kumar. “Last year we went to the US on our own and it cost us 33 percent more,” he adds.

The seemingly reasonable amounts you have to pay may come at the cost of leaving you giddy from whizzing past countries on an agency’s crammed package. But on your way back on a discounted airline, at least you can sing that old rhyme from geography class along with your good neighbour – “Long-legged Italy kicked poor Sicily, right in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Austria was Hungary, took a bit of Turkey, fried it in Japan, ate it off in China.”