Last week, a week so dreary and soggy and pigeon-grey I nearly threw myself out into traffic, I somehow managed to talk the mister into buying tickets to India in January. Twenty minutes of internet trawling, followed by a phone call to a bucket shop in Little India, two hours later: voila! Tickets to Delhi via Beijing on Air China.

We asked our travel agent if she had ever flown Air China. She shook her head vigourously.

"But theoretically would you fly Air China?" we asked.

"Maybe," she said. "But only if someone gave me the ticket for free." Then she added, "Suggest the vegetarian meal."

All right, then.

We've both been to India before, and we know it's busy, noisy, polluted. Nothing makes any sense, and time runs in every direction but the one you want it to. And we can't wait to get back there. We instantly agreed that we'd packed too hard last time. Now it's little more than a change of clothes, a toothbrush and flip-flops, and we'll make do.

Airline travel could be sufficiently demonized by the time our next vacation rolls around, and instead of Air China we'll be looking at steerage on some marginally seaworthy ocean liner. I've been looking to offset the flights and was appropriately bitchslapped by the calculations. 6 tonnes of CO2 each--that's double what we offgas just by living for a year. To offset it Gold-Standard style, it's about $200 each. That's 8,000 rupees, or truly an embarrassing assload of guilt money.