- Yesterday afternoon, as promised, I got to work preparing the following numbers for our expenses incurred since we’d arrived in India on January 31, 2020, until we departed on January 11, 2021, a few weeks short of one year. Included, first, are the expenses for the train tour on the Maharajas Express, followed by the private tour we’d booked which began immediately after the one-week train tour of India. The second grouping is for the expenses while living in the hotel in Mumbai for 291 days.
Based on the fact we are now in South Africa, we included the money exchange into Rands (ZAR), from US dollars. If you are in another country and would like to see these numbers in your familiar currency, please click here for an easy link. This is simple to use but if you have any problems, feel free to ask us for assistance.
| Expenses | US Dollar | South African Rand (ZAR) |
| Maharajas Express Train Fare for 2 | 11,996.00 | 177,694.35 |
| Tips | 433.38 | 6,419.57 |
| India Tour | 19,530.00 | 289,293.98 |
| Dining Out | 115.43 | 1,709.84 |
| Visa Fees – India for 2 | 120.00 | 1,777.54 |
| ATM fees | 24.30 | 359.95 |
| Total | 32,219.11 | 477,255.23 |
| Avg Daily Cost 53 days (6 nights train, tour, plus 4 nights hotel in Mumbai prior to lockdown) | 607.91 | 9,004.81 |
| Expenses | US Dollar |
South African Rand |
| Mumbai Hotel (10 months) inc. meals | 31,213.89 | 471,295.50 |
| Tips | 1071.53 | 16,178.93 |
| Supplies, pharmacy, toiletries & miscellaneous | 2515.06 | 37,963.31 |
| Dining in restaurants | Included in hotel bill | |
| Visa extension Fees – India for 2 | 136.00 | 2,052.84 |
| ATM fees | 18.25 | 275.47 |
| Total | 34,954.73 | 527,175.31 |
| Avg Daily Cost 291 nights | 120.15 | 1,812.06 |
Grand Total from above: 67,173.84 1,012,797.96
Average Daily Cost 347 days 193.51 2,917.60
We’re thrilled to have these numbers finally presented here. In actuality, it wasn’t that difficult to do since I had already recorded everything in our usual spreadsheet. All I had to do was convert the currency and figure out an easy to read format since numbers like this aren’t easy to format in a website such as ours.
As it turned out, we didn’t spend much more than we would have in a normal year of world travel with the exception of cruises. It’s those pricey cruises that always increase our annual expenses. We haven’t included our health insurance or insurance on our belongings which runs approximately another US $5300, ZAR 79,844.61 per year.
Also, we didn’t include purchases for clothing, digital equipment, our phone calling, and WiFi use (pay only for what we use on Google Fi plus US $17, ZAR 256.11, a month for the service). Also, we didn’t include annual fees for cloud services, website services, Ancestry.com, and various streaming services.
Although we spend our days and nights on the veranda, when we go indoors for the night, we usually watch one streamed episode on my laptop, which we place atop a book on the bed. With no TV in the bedroom, we have no interest in sitting in front of the TV in the lounge room where it’s often very hot and “buggie” at night.
As most of you know, we only buy clothes when we’re in the US other than a few items we may desperately need from time to time. Right now, I have less clothing than I’ve had since we began traveling, but what I wear these days has become less of a concern for either of us over the years. As long as we have something clean and in reasonably good shape, we’re content.
Thank goodness, here in Marloth Park, there’s no need for anything “dressy” and with the unlikelihood of cruising for the next year or two, we won’t even have to give our wardrobe a thought. We often wonder when cruising will be possible again and are surmising, that most likely, future cruises will require proof of vaccination.
With the slow pace of the prospect of vaccinations becoming available in South Africa, we may not be able to cruise for some time. It’s not looking promising. By the way, today is day #9 of our self-imposed quarantine with only 5 more days to go. As mentioned, we will have tremendous peace of mind when the 14 days have passed. We’re doing the Covid-19 quarantine countdown from the day we arrived in Marloth Park on January 13th, not the day we began the long journey on January 11th.
Of course, we will continue to exercise tremendous caution in wearing masks, social distancing, and handwashing until such time in the distant future that it’s not required to do so, whenever that may be, if ever. It’s hard to speculate.
As soon as the vendor arrives with his truck at Louise and Danie’s office about five minutes from here, we’ll drive over to collect a 40 kg, 88 pounds, bag of sweet potatoes for the wildlife. Most of them love the small potatoes which the farmer gives away since they are too small for sale at the grocery stores. They are dirty and often attached to stems but the kudus, warthogs, and wildebeests love them. After all, they are used to grazing in the dirt anyway so this is normal for them.
That’s it for today, folks. It’s hard to believe we left India 11 days ago.
Stay safe and healthy!
Photo from one year ago today, January 22, 2020:
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| One year ago, we posted this photo we’d taken in 2013 while on a road trip. Bourke’s Luck Potholes which was definitely our favorite photo of the day on our three-day tour of the Panorama Route and Blyde River Canyon. See the year-ago post here. |