We had planned this trip and replanned it a good few times. It was only about ten days before we were to leave Dubai that it finally took some shape — fly down to Madurai, spend a day with family, and take the morning train up to Kumbakonam. A month in India ahead of us, and for once a settled plan.

Then, a week before we were to leave, something urgent came up at their end and the family could not make it after all. We decided to hold on to our plans anyway, even though it now meant walking into an empty house in Madurai.

So, we packed for almost a month, and for the first time ever we were flying with four suitcases. It was also the first time we were going to be away this long, so the two facts went together well enough, even if the sight of them lined up in the lobby did not. The Tesla was at our building five minutes early. Mohammed loaded all four into the boot himself, made sure we were comfortable, asked us where in India we were from and then found some Tamil music for the short ride to the airport. At the terminal we told him he could move on. He did not. He fetched a trolley, loaded every suitcase on to it, and only then left.

Check-in was a breeze, and so were immigration and security. Fifty minutes from the time we got into the car we were sitting at the boarding gates. So much for hassle-free travelling.

At the check-in counter in Dubai I had asked Omar to tell me what the four suitcases weighed together. I already knew we would be paying something for the excess and had made my peace with that much. What I had not made my peace with was the number. Our allowance on the domestic leg was 30kgs between us and we were 25.4kgs over it. Pre-booking the excess came to ₹15,000. Booking it individually would have brought it down to around ₹14,500, which was still more than the ₹12,000 the two tickets had cost us in the first place.

The Dubai–Chennai leg was never going to be the problem, that sat comfortably inside our economy allowance. It was the domestic hop to Madurai I had been uneasy about — a separate booking on IndiGo, the earliest flight out of Chennai. I had expected to pay something extra on that one. Not this.

So we settled down at gate B26 and worked at it while we waited for the boarding call.

First train was considered. Tejas was not running that day. Vande Bharat had no availability. That left 16127, which gets into Madurai as late as 19:00, and that made no sense at all, because the whole point of Madurai was to leave it the next morning for Kumbakonam. Then the Cholan Express, straight to Kumbakonam, named for the country we were heading into. And thankfully, there was availability. This was the very booking I had made when the plan was ours alone, and had cancelled only when the family was to join us and the itinerary changed. Now here it was again, and I was to book it all over again.

My vote was for the train, naturally. But it still left the business of getting from the airport to the railway station with four suitcases, and a porter at Chennai and another at Kumbakonam. P wanted none of it. Take a cab, she said, and be done with the transfers.

So I messaged Karthik, who runs a travel agency in Madurai. He came back quickly and arranged a one-way drop to Kumbakonam for ₹7,500, which was half of what the excess baggage would have cost us.

That left the IndiGo ticket. Contrary to my usual practice I had taken a saver fare this time, being quite sure that we would be making the trip. Cancelling it would have returned us ₹106 on ₹12,000. Out of pure frustration I decided not to cancel it at all. I thought about doing a web check-in instead, was not sure what that would imply, and left it alone. So the fare stays with IndiGo as charity. It is a bleeding airline anyway, and any amount of charity will only do them good.

By the time we boarded, all of it had been settled over WhatsApp. Emirates then did the one thing that settles a South Indian at 38,000 feet — dinner was rice, sambar and a beans-and-carrot poriyal. As South Indian as it could get. The 21:00 departure left twenty minutes behind schedule and we landed at Chennai at 02:46. It was 04:10 by the time we were out of immigration, nearly an hour and a half from touchdown, and by then there were not many bags still going round on the belt. In Dubai, fifty minutes had covered the drive to the airport, the check-in, immigration and security, all of it together.

The cab was booked for 06:30 and that was my own doing. I had not wanted Vijay driving down in the small hours and blinking at the wheel, for reasons that are obvious enough. Which left us two hours to get through. We found ourselves a couple of chairs at the international-to-domestic luggage transfer counter, with a small Sangeetha outlet next to it. I had put it down as a wait to be endured. It passed much better than we had expected.

Vijay drove well and hardly ever went above 80kmph. P managed a couple of hours of good sleep. I found it hard to keep myself awake but stayed awake all the same, being conscious that it might rub off on the man at the wheel. We stopped for breakfast at a place called Oorvasi near Tindivanam at about 09:00 and had dosa. We were in Kumbakonam a couple of minutes before noon.

P loved the drive and has been saying since that we should be doing this more often. She liked the manner of it too. She has always been the one for an impromptu decision, and here we had turned the whole plan on its head while sitting at a boarding gate.

That was yesterday. As I write this, on our second day here, a car is on its way to us from Madurai. It was always going to be ours for these days, that much of the original plan survives, and it will take us around the temples here before taking us on to Madurai — which is where we would have started, had any of this gone the way we intended. Coming from Chennai you reach Kumbakonam first and Madurai after, so nothing has been lost, only turned around. The car, though, is doing the whole run down from Madurai empty.

We always travel with a well-planned itinerary and clear hotel bookings. This was a misadventure of sorts. Or was it? Either way it remains a curious case of no-shows.