Welcome Masala Popcorn: A brand new series of spicy goodness.

Listen, this is no Real Simple (fabulousness that is a magazine and TV program filled with useful tips and advice for better living) but we do have a few tricks and secrets up our sleeves here at Nothing About Much and we (includes friends & family and contributions always welcome) have a hard time keeping things to ourselves...

So today we shall kick off a series of handydoodles, secrets, darn good advice and more that will be featured in addition to regular posts.

I will call this series 'Masala Popcorn'.


Masala Popcorn 1

I finally bought my ticket to India. Every year the situation gets worse. The travel agents tell us stories of seats being blocked off by the airlines, the airlines continue to slap on taxes and fuel surcharges (almost a third of my ticket is taxes and surcharges!) and for some reason Expedia, Orbitz and the other travel aggregators we have come to rely on for domestic travel haven't quite figured out the India route yet (all fares show up at least $1000 more than travel agents quotes). For years I believed the travel agents had the best deal but this year I was wrong. The airlines have gotten smarter and are now offering the most competitive deals directly through their websites.

I found to my surprise and delight, really good fares on BA.com. Here's where it gets better: On the airline websites, you can experiment with different dates and find the lowest fare within your date ranges (the difference between flying on the 23rd and the 25th of December is significant!) but before you punch in your credit card information online, call your agent and ask him to match/beat your deal. My agent was actually able to offer a slightly lower fare than BA.com.
Calling a travel agent armed with as much knowledge as you can get your hands on is the way to go...it might take a few hours of research online but it's worth not feeling like you got ripped off. Again.