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Our flight home leaves at 6.00am this morning.  We’re supposed to be at the airport three hours in advance.  It takes an hour and a half to get from the hotel to the airport, which means leaving at 1.30 am.  I’m nodding off just writing this ………

Some of the hotel staff come to say goodbye and wave us off.  Guests don’t usually stay as long as we did and we’ve got to know them.  They’ve been really nice snd helpful and have taken a real interest in the wedding.

The ride to the airport is the complete opposite of the ride we had from the airport when we first arrived.  For a start, the taxi is full of petrol.  The driver is full of something else; no idea what, but he’s buzzing and in a hurry.

All taxis in Goa have seatbelts fitted in the back as well as in the front.  It’s not a legal requirement to actually use them - or indeed that they should actually work.  If this was the case, there would probably be no taxis on the road at all.

The road to the airport is narrow, winding up hill and down dale.  It’s also very busy, even at this time of night.  Cars, scooters, bicycles ….. all vying for dominance on the road.  They drive so fast - undertaking and overtaking, hand continuously on the horn.  The other hand might be holding a phone as the driver negotiates another pick-up.  We narrowly avoid hitting two cows as they stand in the middle of a darkened street

It’s a bit like Wacky Races - and would be funny if it wasn’t actually terrifying.  My seat belt doesn’t work.  I keep expecting to hear an announcement saying “assume crash position”.  The driver knocks half an hour off the journey time, doing the trip in just under 60 minutes.  It’s probably a record.  

So we now have three and a half hours until the flight.  That’s OK we think - we can relax in the airport lounge, get a drink and something to eat and spend the last of our Rupees on presents in the duty-free shop.

There is no duty-free shop in the International departures lounge.  There’s not even a lounge - just a vast hall with hard metal benches.  And food and drink comes courtesy of a kiosk about the size of a garden shed, selling tandoori tikka pizzas and bottles of fizzy drink. 

We’re able to board the aircraft an hour before departure, so we have somewhere comfortable to sit.  Which is handy because we have to sit for a long time.  We’re an hour and a half late leaving because the baggage-loading machine breaks down and it takes a while to fix it.

The flight however is good and uneventful.  Apart from when one of the cabin crew comes over and points to a weather phenomena visible through our window - a completely spherical rainbow.  Amazing.

We’re through passport control in about ten minutes and would have been out of the airport in less than half-an-hour if I’d not spend about 20 minutes standing at the wrong baggage carousel.

We have a cab booked to get home and the driver’s waiting for us as we leave the arrivals hall.  And home for a cup of tea by 3 O’Clock.  And relax.

It'll probably take a couple of days for this big adventure to sink in.