The end

Nov 18, 2008

Rashmi missed Mandara so much, I thought it was wierd. Mandara just thought we had gone to office. This was our second honeymoon and I guess the place made it seem extra special.

3000 highway km, 125 foot km, 1000 photos, 23 days later the trip comes to an end. One thing I dont like about vacations is that, in the end they come to an end. It was a good choice to go during the shoulder period because there were lesser tourists than the peak season, there were places where we were the only people around, so you are the preferred guest for that day. People are very friendly and it is a very beautiful country. One of the goals of the DOC in fiordland is to safe guard the beauty of the place in perpetuity, which is exactly what they should do, that place inspires. Would love to go back and maybe walk the Routeburn Track. Would surely spend more time in fiordland and Mt Cook, may be do the bungy next time. There were may times when we would be sitting there amongst all those beautiful sights, and one of use would exclaim "isn't this just like a postcard". In the end I believe that cameras only tell part of the story. McKinnon's pass on a clear beautiful day would be a sight to behold. I would also like to visit Invercargill and Stewart Island, since effectively those are the end of the earth as we humans know it.

The whole country has only 2 lane highways and that suffices I guess, since traffic is really thin in most places. Also there are a whole lot of one lane bridges all over the southern island, dont really understand why, but they dont seem to be causing traffic pile ups, so many be it is fine. The sheep just look so delicious, all I could think of was lamb shanks and sheek kebab.

Though we couldnt spend our wedding anniversary in NZ, it was well worth the effort. It really was an effort getting the planning perfect, everything checked out with no problems what so ever (I am thinking we can start a travel business as an alternative career). We were up at 3am on July 15, when the bookings for the Milford Track open for the season, then we find that the site is crashing may be due to the initial load and by the time we get into the site, half the places had been taken. But we did get our resevations in the end. The last few weeks were hectic in terms of obtaining our visas, since my passport needed to be renewed and Rashmi's had run out of pages, we both had official travel weeks before the vacationa nd Rashmi's travel was 2 weeks before the actual vacation, so organizing the visas was touch and go, the Malaysian visa arrived a day before we left.

It did take a long time to write all of this up, but finally it is done and I am happy that I can now share this with my friends and family.