2012-12-24 13:00:53-05
Wandering Earl 
Today I write to you from Palolem Beach, a most idyllic stretch of sand in the southern part of the Indian state of Goa. And it is right here where I shall plant my nomadic rear end for the next ten days or so in order to catch up on work, to celebrate the New Year, and most importantly, to take part in some relaxed beach living, which happens to be a kind of living I enjoy sprinkling into my lifestyle every now and then.
And while I’ll write more about my time here in Goa at some point after the New Year, and knowing that many people are busy with the holidays and end of year festivities this week, this post will be a short one, the goal of which is to offer a piece of travel advice that just might save you some money on your travels. It is this very same, and very simple, method that I’m about to explain that saved me about $193 USD the other day here in India. Four days ago I was in that crazy city of Varanasi when my friend and I decided that we wanted to go to the beach. And after a quick online search revealed that the train ride from Varanasi to Goa would take almost 40 hours and that there weren’t any seats available on any trains heading in that direction for at least a week, we decided to look at our flight options. It turned out that we could fly from Varanasi to Goa, having to change planes in Delhi en route, for $393 USD per person one-way. Ouch. That’s expensive and didn’t seem worth it at all. But then, I started messing around with different destinations, combinations of flights and trains and any other possible routes I could think of. And after thirty minutes, I surprisingly found an infinitely better option. The flight for $393 USD would have left Varanasi at 11:30am and arrived to Delhi at 12:50pm. The next flight would have left Delhi at 5:15pm and arrived at Goa’s Dabolim Airport at 7:45pm. However, if I searched for each of those legs separately, I discovered that I could buy one ticket from Varanasi to Delhi for $70 USD and one ticket from Delhi to Goa for $130 USD. And the incredible thing was that these two separate flight tickets were for the exact same airline and the exact same flights as the more expensive ticket above. So in the end, just by booking each of the two sections of the journey independently, I managed to save $193 USD. To make sure this wasn’t a fluke, and knowing that I might have to fly to Bucharest in mid-January for a quick stop, I started researching airfares from India. And sure enough, after twenty minutes of looking, the cheapest option I found was a one-way ticket from Mumbai to Dubai, followed by a separate one-way ticket from Dubai to Bucharest. This option would save me $35 USD and while that might not be a huge amount of savings, it’s certainly not insignificant and, more importantly, it helps prove the point that you should always check to see if two separate flight tickets are cheaper than one! You never know what you’ll find and you could end up saving big, like I did this week. Safe travels everyone and I wish you all a wonderful holiday season!
And you might want to have a look at this pocket-sized solar recharger from GoalZero.com (a very cool company!). It could be the perfect gift for anyone who takes their gadgets on the road!
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