I just got back from a ten-day camping trip in Himachal Pradesh. Being with 38 strangers in the mountains for almost two weeks lead to some pretty funny scenarios, and so I thought I would share them with you guys. I am not a fan of taking an impromptu trip, but when my team at work decided they needed to go blow off some steam, it was either join them or stay back and work. I know, right? What a difficult choice. (Sarcasm)
Anyway, I booked my flight, registered with the organisers and like a professional procrastinator; waited till the day of departure to pack my bags. Needless to say that I was bound to screw up one of these things, and it ended up being my ticket booking. I accidentally booked my return ticket for July instead of June. Now if any of you have ever travelled spontaneously, you will probably know that websites like makemytrip, via and trivago are the most helpful when you need to book cheap flights. However, they behave like you’re a sinner if you need to cancel or reschedule bookings.
The first option was to ring up their customer-care line. When I did, it sounded something like this, ‘Your call is being transfered and might be recored for training purposes’, followed by twenty minutes of ear-cancer causing music before you decide to hang up, if not yourself. Tip: Don’t be fooled by that sweet-talking recorded voice. You will never hear another human voice if you wait on that line.
Option two was to email them. Getting a response was a long shot, but worth the try. I got a reply a few hours later, telling me that I coudn’t be reimbursed for my stupidity and that I had to live with the consequences of my hasty actions. It was a little better worded than that, but you get the gist. Feeling stupid, I decided to go ahead and cancel the return ticket and book another in its place.
There was bound to be a twist, and this was the most annoying one yet. Just after accepting that I had to pay a higher price for my new ticket and not be reimbursed for my old one, I got a call from the airlines saying they are willing to convert my cancelled ticket money into points that I could redeem while booking my new flight. Sounds perfect right? Except I had already booked my new ticket!
So to sum up, I messed up while booking my return flight, was told that I was an idiot and was not going to be reimbursed, cancelled the ticket, booked a new one for twice as much and then got a call saying that I could have gotten the new ticket for cheaper than the original.
With all this happening before I even left, you can only imagine how enthusiastic about the actual journey I was. But it turned out to be the best trip I have ever been on (no pun intended). More incidents that occurred on the trip coming soon, stay tuned.
Until then, कीपिट रीयल…:^)