After yesterdays surprise of the trains being fully booked, I thought it wise to try and spend at least a part of today sorting out my future travel arrangements. This meant deciding where to go after India...

After his offer to get me a train ticket to Delhi for a discounted price, today the hotel manager got me a 10% discount on my next hotel in Delhi - with pickup from the train station thrown in for good measure. Cheers Deepak! So with the hotel situation sorted out, I just had to concentrate on flights.

I read in my guidebook that Calcutta is a really cheap place to get tickets to SEAsia. As I'll be there on the 22nd of Feb, I thought I'd check it out and see how the prices compare. I scouted around on the internet, and its true. Indian and Thai national carriers do the best deals, but only fly on certain days. Already a lot of their flights are booked for the end of next month.

I had some questions about how you get your tickets. Do they get posted like in the UK? If this is the case, then I will never get them - I'm going to be moving most days around the north of India. If they are issued at time of booking, then I can't use the internet and will have to go into a shop to do it. Can you get electronic tickets here? I looked all over the sites I found, but there was no indication about how you received your ticket, just info on what to do if you loose them.

As Deepak was so helpfull yesterday, I thought I'd ask him how it works here. Within minutes of asking him about tickets and how they are issued, he was on the phone to see about flights from Calcutta to Bombay for the afternoon of the 22nd. Tomorrow I will find out if there is anything available from his contacts. If there is and its a good price, then by this time tomorrow I will be holding not just my train ticket for Friday, but also the plane ticket for my onward travels!

So, it looks like I may be in Thailand for the 23rd of February - so long as I remember to steer clear of sneezing chickens, I'll be fine.

On the subject of animals, I have been here for a couple of days now and still not seen any cows - on the road or otherwise... are they all playing hide and seek?