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Prologue
Caution Notice: This is going to be a really slow work-in-progress t'log as I don't have the luxury of time like in the yesteryear's, so please bear with me!!!
Wedding, Done & Dusted!!!
Next Chapter : India to New Zealand
What's coming later ?
Caution Notice: This is going to be a really slow work-in-progress t'log as I don't have the luxury of time like in the yesteryear's, so please bear with me!!!
Where to go ?
Somewhere in 2013 me and my wife (then girlfriend) decided to take the plunge and get married. So after the mandatory few months of Indian soap opera scenes at homes, the folks relented. And, in December of 2013 we were engaged and all set to be wedded almost exactly a year later. Now, this meant we had the whole year to plan which may sound like a good thing, but trust me its more bane than boon. You have no excuses to fall back on like, 'sorry didn't get enough time to plan the wedding and honeymoon both, so lets go some where easy to manage' or even the most common middle class line, 'The wedding expenses came as a big blow, I could not plan for a honeymoon'
None of that was going to work. So we basically spent the next couple of weeks swaying (and arguing) between every place there is in the world from Ladakh, Sikkim, A Euro Trip to even Bora Bora. And then came the all to familiar realization that pockets aren't deep and free time isn't available in abundance. So we agreed that we wanted to go 'abroad' but some where cheap and for maybe 5-6 days at the most, Maldives was the all too obvious answer and that was on the radar for the next few months, though we didn't do any bookings as such.
With something like 8 months to go the D-day, my wife chanced upon a article about motorcycle trips in New Zealand and she was already more than convinced. It did not help that a good friend Haroon from xBhp had done this a few years ago with his wife and reading his blog about it both of us were sold to the idea. So I spent the next few weeks budgeting the whole thing out and even by conservative estimates it was costing almost as much as Ninja650 in Delhi, and with a slight amount of splurge factored in it was costing as much as a Ninja650 in Bangalore. Just to add that ever since the 650 was launched 4 years ago, I've wanted to pick one up but its been 'unreachable', much like the plan for New Zealand. While my wife is an eternal optimist, I am a pessimist who thinks he's a realist and in my books this was impossible to do plan. But my wife was convinced that it had to be this and nothing else because of the whole biking element which would be a massive plus for me, but also for her it would be a varied experience of everything unlike the sunny beaches 'only' experience of the Maldives. She even threw at me her version of the line, 'In twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed with the things you didn't do, than the things you did!!!'. To keep it simple and short, we decided to take some hits, cut down on a lot of things for the wedding and few other things over the next months, break the bank and even take some from the bank. But we were going to do this!
How to even plan this ?
First things first, speak to someone who's done this before. No problem on that front, I spent more than an hour chatting up with Haroon bhai over the phone to get an idea about things. I had done some preliminary research before I spoke him, so that helped to throw some ideas at him and understand if I was being just a little insane or completely insane. Given the extremely tight budget, all the minutest details needed to be tracked and had to be assigned a number as to how much it would cost. Variable cost items like meals were assigned a variances and we had to see how exactly an upward or downward trend had an impact on the budget. Fixed expenses like flights and bike rental and stay were more or less known, but the biggest budget impact items and most 'toughest to drop off' items were adventure activities which NZ is famous for. With about 6 months to go, we first booked our flight tickets as the prices tend to spike up quickly and without notice. The next item checked off from the list was the bike rental, this part was easy as I decided to stick with the same company (South Pacific Motorcycle Tours) that Haroon bhai had used. Choosing the bike was even easier, it had to be the cheapest one in their lot and the only two starter options available were, either a 2014 Suzuki VStrom 650 or a 2014 Triumph Bonny. It was a no-brainer and the VStrom was booked. With two of the biggest expenses sorted out, we felt at ease as now the only things left to do was accommodation and visas.
Though accommodation usually can be expensive, we chose to stick to BnB's (best resource: AirBnB) for the most part which works out pretty cheap when compared to hotels. Plus, the added advantage of a BnB is the ability to interact closely with the locals get some really cool insights. Though at some places we did splurge and booked expensive BnB's and hotels, we allowed ourselves these luxuries within the tight limits of our budget, because after all it was a honeymoon trip. But to book the stay we first had to chart out a route and decide where exactly we wanted to stay for the night. Everything had to be planned to the T because December is the start of the peak season and we did not want to be caught in a unwanted situation. One thing was certain that we would be sticking only to the south island of NZ as two weeks (yes, we bumped up the time from 5-6 days) would be just about enough for South Island alone that too without much time to spare. We used the next couple of months make the stay bookings at a relaxed pace and chart out the route as we went ahead, barring maybe 2 locations we did not have much trouble find a nice place within our parameters.
The next big task was to sort out the visas, we had to apply not only for a NZ tourist visa but also an AU transit visa, because our transit time in AU was more than 8 hours. I read up all the documentation and based on that we could apply with just one application for the NZ visa as we came under the 'partners' category and I had almost all the documents available. But I decided to speak to the visa application center first, and it was a hilarious turn of events. The requirements mentioned by the visa applications center were over and above the ones mentioned on the official website. The guys wanted a copy of the wedding invitation card (ok fair enough!!), a signed letter from both our parents stating that we are indeed getting married (WTF!!!), a company letter head signed letter from the HR that we actually have approved leaves for the duration of our travel (again WTF!!), all this was over and above the already long list of documents that were needed for the visa processing and to top it off we could not apply as partners and needed to put in separate application forms (ouch! cost shooting up). In most weddings the cards are printed just a few weeks before the wedding and ours was no different. We were scheduled to get delivery of the printed cards about 6 weeks before the wedding, now given that the visa processing time on their website was mentioned as about 2 weeks processing, we comfortably left this for a time when we got the cards in hand (a super idiot move on my part, we could have just printed sample wedding cards in advance and applied). Cutting a long story short, we applied for the visa 1 month and 2 weeks before the wedding, my wife's visa came in exactly two weeks as promised and mine was nowhere to be seen. I called the helplines, sent multiple emails without any luck, it was just lying in a 'In Progress' status on their website. With quite literally everything booked we both were on tenterhooks all the time. I was to drive from Bangalore to Mumbai with our entire luggage a week before the wedding, as we were to fly out of Mumbai. My passport arrived after 5 weeks, just the day before I left for Mumbai. And we were yet to apply for the AU transit visa and that had a promised processing time of 1 week. In the end, it all worked out in the nick of time. We had our version of the mad Indian wedding, and once that was over we had about 2 days of rest (so called!!) before jumping onto a plane for a 30 hour journey to Christchurch, New Zealand.
Somewhere in 2013 me and my wife (then girlfriend) decided to take the plunge and get married. So after the mandatory few months of Indian soap opera scenes at homes, the folks relented. And, in December of 2013 we were engaged and all set to be wedded almost exactly a year later. Now, this meant we had the whole year to plan which may sound like a good thing, but trust me its more bane than boon. You have no excuses to fall back on like, 'sorry didn't get enough time to plan the wedding and honeymoon both, so lets go some where easy to manage' or even the most common middle class line, 'The wedding expenses came as a big blow, I could not plan for a honeymoon'
None of that was going to work. So we basically spent the next couple of weeks swaying (and arguing) between every place there is in the world from Ladakh, Sikkim, A Euro Trip to even Bora Bora. And then came the all to familiar realization that pockets aren't deep and free time isn't available in abundance. So we agreed that we wanted to go 'abroad' but some where cheap and for maybe 5-6 days at the most, Maldives was the all too obvious answer and that was on the radar for the next few months, though we didn't do any bookings as such. With something like 8 months to go the D-day, my wife chanced upon a article about motorcycle trips in New Zealand and she was already more than convinced. It did not help that a good friend Haroon from xBhp had done this a few years ago with his wife and reading his blog about it both of us were sold to the idea. So I spent the next few weeks budgeting the whole thing out and even by conservative estimates it was costing almost as much as Ninja650 in Delhi, and with a slight amount of splurge factored in it was costing as much as a Ninja650 in Bangalore
. Just to add that ever since the 650 was launched 4 years ago, I've wanted to pick one up but its been 'unreachable', much like the plan for New Zealand. While my wife is an eternal optimist, I am a pessimist who thinks he's a realist and in my books this was impossible to do plan. But my wife was convinced that it had to be this and nothing else because of the whole biking element which would be a massive plus for me, but also for her it would be a varied experience of everything unlike the sunny beaches 'only' experience of the Maldives. She even threw at me her version of the line, 'In twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed with the things you didn't do, than the things you did!!!'. To keep it simple and short, we decided to take some hits, cut down on a lot of things for the wedding and few other things over the next months, break the bank and even take some from the bank. But we were going to do this!How to even plan this ?
First things first, speak to someone who's done this before. No problem on that front, I spent more than an hour chatting up with Haroon bhai over the phone to get an idea about things. I had done some preliminary research before I spoke him, so that helped to throw some ideas at him and understand if I was being just a little insane or completely insane. Given the extremely tight budget, all the minutest details needed to be tracked and had to be assigned a number as to how much it would cost. Variable cost items like meals were assigned a variances and we had to see how exactly an upward or downward trend had an impact on the budget. Fixed expenses like flights and bike rental and stay were more or less known, but the biggest budget impact items and most 'toughest to drop off' items were adventure activities which NZ is famous for. With about 6 months to go, we first booked our flight tickets as the prices tend to spike up quickly and without notice. The next item checked off from the list was the bike rental, this part was easy as I decided to stick with the same company (South Pacific Motorcycle Tours) that Haroon bhai had used. Choosing the bike was even easier, it had to be the cheapest one in their lot and the only two starter options available were, either a 2014 Suzuki VStrom 650 or a 2014 Triumph Bonny. It was a no-brainer and the VStrom was booked. With two of the biggest expenses sorted out, we felt at ease as now the only things left to do was accommodation and visas.
Though accommodation usually can be expensive, we chose to stick to BnB's (best resource: AirBnB) for the most part which works out pretty cheap when compared to hotels. Plus, the added advantage of a BnB is the ability to interact closely with the locals get some really cool insights. Though at some places we did splurge and booked expensive BnB's and hotels, we allowed ourselves these luxuries within the tight limits of our budget, because after all it was a honeymoon trip
. But to book the stay we first had to chart out a route and decide where exactly we wanted to stay for the night. Everything had to be planned to the T because December is the start of the peak season and we did not want to be caught in a unwanted situation. One thing was certain that we would be sticking only to the south island of NZ as two weeks (yes, we bumped up the time from 5-6 days) would be just about enough for South Island alone that too without much time to spare. We used the next couple of months make the stay bookings at a relaxed pace and chart out the route as we went ahead, barring maybe 2 locations we did not have much trouble find a nice place within our parameters. The next big task was to sort out the visas, we had to apply not only for a NZ tourist visa but also an AU transit visa, because our transit time in AU was more than 8 hours. I read up all the documentation and based on that we could apply with just one application for the NZ visa as we came under the 'partners' category and I had almost all the documents available. But I decided to speak to the visa application center first, and it was a hilarious turn of events. The requirements mentioned by the visa applications center were over and above the ones mentioned on the official website. The guys wanted a copy of the wedding invitation card (ok fair enough!!), a signed letter from both our parents stating that we are indeed getting married (WTF!!!), a company letter head signed letter from the HR that we actually have approved leaves for the duration of our travel (again WTF!!), all this was over and above the already long list of documents that were needed for the visa processing and to top it off we could not apply as partners and needed to put in separate application forms (ouch! cost shooting up). In most weddings the cards are printed just a few weeks before the wedding and ours was no different. We were scheduled to get delivery of the printed cards about 6 weeks before the wedding, now given that the visa processing time on their website was mentioned as about 2 weeks processing, we comfortably left this for a time when we got the cards in hand (a super idiot move on my part, we could have just printed sample wedding cards in advance and applied). Cutting a long story short, we applied for the visa 1 month and 2 weeks before the wedding, my wife's visa came in exactly two weeks as promised and mine was nowhere to be seen. I called the helplines, sent multiple emails without any luck, it was just lying in a 'In Progress' status on their website. With quite literally everything booked we both were on tenterhooks all the time. I was to drive from Bangalore to Mumbai with our entire luggage a week before the wedding, as we were to fly out of Mumbai. My passport arrived after 5 weeks, just the day before I left for Mumbai. And we were yet to apply for the AU transit visa and that had a promised processing time of 1 week. In the end, it all worked out in the nick of time. We had our version of the mad Indian wedding, and once that was over we had about 2 days of rest (so called!!) before jumping onto a plane for a 30 hour journey to Christchurch, New Zealand.
Wedding, Done & Dusted!!!
Next Chapter : India to New Zealand
What's coming later ?
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