Up Up and Away

Well, here we are at Birmingham International Airport - in Yates!! Some of the party are living it up in the Executive lounge with free drinks and nibbles, but the rest of us are with the plebs.
I have had a really sore throat and bad cold these last few days, but it might just be easing after taking a whole lot of Vitamin C courtesy of Maria at work - plus decongestant and Vic then Albus oil in my hankie. I must be rattling when you add to that malaria tablets and probiotics to prepare my stomach for the treats in store.
For the record our party consists of Rachel and myself, Richard and Helen, Flick and Paul, Sharon and James, Dave and Chris, Gary and Tracy, Alan, Claire and James.
Our mission is to join fellow Tablers, and assorted guests from all 9 "94" numbered Tables around the world for the annual twinning weekend. As it involves a trip to India the Tablers from Madras Cosmopolitan Round Table (MCRT) in Chennai have organised a week long trip around southern India beforehand and a four day trip to Delhi and the Taj Mahal afterwards. Not all are going to Delhi - Rachel is coming home and I am staying on for a few days in Goa.
We have a 7 hour trip to Dubai, followed by 4 hours to Chennai, but we are with Emirates so should be fine. The departure is delayed by 30 minutes.
We have all been given the names of the families where we are staying - ours are Ashish and Shalini. Mehul and the team from MCRT have been brilliant so far - we are even getting Indian sim cards so we can phone each other cheaply.
I will try and keep the blog up to date but it might be difficult - I have my laptop, but might need to post on line using computers in hotels if I cannot cut and paste into the blog.
Please post you comments. I will be running a competition to see who is the first person on the tour to tell me the answer to a question I ask on the blog. The answer has to be communicated to someone from England to one of the 15 travellers from the UK and they have to tell me the answer in person. First answer concerns the meeting point for our coach trip around Chennai - it will be at the Ghandi memorial on the beach road - thats all you have to tell them
Well that's it for starters. Yippppeeeeeeeeeeeeeee