Dan: We’re Back!

My last post was from the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, on the eve of our journey home. Before leaving India, however, we had just enough time to spend a few final days in Chennai. We were lucky enough to stay with Grania’s cousin Jenny and her daughter Michelle, who live in a mercifully quiet suburb of Chennai, in a beautiful house on the coast.

We spent the last few days of trip unwinding by the pool and shopping for souveniers & last-minute gifts. We even had enough time for a day-trip to Mamallapuram, a small fishing village to the south of Chennai. Mamallapuram is one of Tamil Nadu’s biggest tourist attractions, and is famous throughout India for the seventh century stone temples built there by the ancient Pallava dynasty.

Squeezing in one final UNESCO World Heritage site was the perfect way to finish our three months of travelling. These giant stone carvings of ancient Hindu gods were truly sensational.

But all good things must end, and so on the 10th Feb we finally flew home from Chennai to Belfast. At Chennai airport we’d checked-in wearing nothing but shorts & sandals, sunglasses & t-shirts. Seventeen hours later, exhausted and jetlagged, we arrived in Belfast International wrapped up in jeans & boots, woolly jumpers & raincoats: true to form, the British weather hadn’t let us down!

We spent almost a week catching up with Grania’s family and readjusting to life in the western world before flying on to Manchester to visit my mum in Hebden Bridge. Then we took a train south to visit my dad in Ware. Then, finally, it was time to put on our backpacks for the last time. We took the tube to Finsbury Park, jumped on the W7 bus and made our way back to our home in Crouch End. It was the end of a long, wonderful journey begun fourteen months previously. We put the kettle on and began to unpack. It was good to be home.

Since then we’ve been preparing frantically for the wedding. And I’m delighted to say that the wedding took place in St. Paul’s last weekend and went perfectly. I will leave it to our final Guest Blogger to give us an account of the wedding itself… suffice to say it was a wonderful day, and both bride and groom were delighted to see so many familiar faces after such a long absence.

So stay tuned for two more posts before we put the Flip Side to bed (for now) and settle down to married life and some well-earned rest!