I have been thinking of writing this for a while... somehow got delayed. Every time I sit to write, something would come up and I'd not be able to continue. This post has been written over a period of several days...Traveling with children is always a challenge. If you have a toddler, it is a bigger challenge. If you are traveling by air with your toddler, it becomes a challenging challenge - especially because, you cannot take breaks when you want to. We have flown to India 2 times with our son till now- when he was 4 months old and recently when he was 1 1/2 years old. Last time we traveled by Singapore Airlines, this time it was Cathy Pacific. We liked Singapore Airlines better in both food and service.
We told our pediatrician about our travel during our son's 18 month check-up. She gave us a checklist with all the shots required and the general over the counter medicines that we can carry. We wanted to give him H1N1 vaccine before we left, but it never became available until our travel. She also advised us to keep children's Benadryl with us during the travel, in case our little one got travel sick. She also warned us that, about 2% of kids get hyper-active and asked us to try it in advance. I was kind of sure my son would not eat much of the flight food and so, packed up few chapathis smeared liberally with ghee, 6 pack yobaby yogurt, one sipper cup with milk, lots of dry snacks and pieces of his favourite fruits. We also carried few books and toys (Doodle pro, an ABC toy and a small key chain with LED lights - he likes it) in our hand baggage to entertain him in the flight.
The liquid allowance rule is still in place, but when you travel with kids, you are allowed to carry up to a liter of liquid as long as it fits in a gallon size zip-top bag. The yogurt and milk went into the gallon size bag. Apart from that we had some travel size toiletries and medicines in a quart size zip-top bag. When we boarded the flight, I gave the milk, fruits and yogurt to the flight attendant to be kept in the airplane cooler. We had requested for Indian vegetarian meal for us and Indian vegetarian child meal for the kid. The food was average compared to our previous experiences. The child meal was pathetic and I'm sure no child will like it. It had egg in almost every meal and when we told them that we had asked for a vegetarian meal, their explanation was that, eggs were diary!!! I know eggs are sold in the dairy section in the grocery store, but it is not dairy for sure... For child meal breakfast, they served a sandwich with dry hard ciabatta roll with one huge piece of tofu in the center... They call this kids meal!!! Even an adult would not enjoy this....
The first leg from San Francisco to Hongkong was about 13 hours nonstop (late night flight). This leg was the toughest. Even though our son was not 2 years old yet, we decided to buy a seat for him, as he would not fit into the bassinet they provide. We carried his car seat and fixed it in his flight seat. We could strap him in it when he slept, this way, we were hands free and he was comfortable. The only hassle was carrying the big toddler car seat around in the airports... For us, the trip started with a bad note. My son kicked a passenger's apple juice cup spilling the juice all over him when I was carrying him for a diaper change. The passenger was totally annoyed and unhappy and I felt guilty even though it was an accident. After that, kiddo slept for few hours. When he woke up, he ate some snacks and yogurt. Later he became unhappy about sitting in one place. He wanted to run around and also was a little cranky - not unmanageable though. Finally, after what seemed like a long time, we landed in Hongkong.
We had a 16 hour layover in HongKong. We went out sight seeing for about 5-6 hours (about that, later). Our next leg from Hongkong to Chennai was a 5 1/2 hour flight at about 10 PM local time. The flight was delayed by an hour. All 3 of us were so exhausted that we slept the whole leg. We reached Chennai at around 1.30 AM local time. A long tiring journey came to an end and we were excited to be with our families again :)
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