On October 9th a seemingly innocuous mail from the CFA Institute showed up in my inbox titled "CFA Exam Update". The court hearing about the case between the ICFAI and the CFA Institute (I don't intend to go into the details of the court case here or anywhere) had already been postponed 2 times and the airfares between Mumbai - Singapore / B'lore S'pore even on Tiger airways seemd to move with perfect negative correlation to the stock markets
Prashanth and I had received a confirmation of a change in test center to Nepal a couple of days prior to this and decided to get cracking on the tickets et all..
After doing the rounds of travel agents, websites like et all it boiled down to 3 options
1. Bombay - Gorakhpur (train), by road to the border, walk across and take a 6 hour bus journey to Kathmandu
Cost - Cheapest (~Rs. 3000), Time taken - longest (~3 days each way), Chances of being stuck in a landslide - Highest
2. Bombay - Delhi flight followed by Delhi - Kat flight
Cost - Most expensive (~Rs. 25000), Time taken - Shortest (<24 hours), Chances of being stuck in a landslide - negligible :D
3. Bombay - Delhi (Train), followed by Delhi - Kat flight - Indian was full and Jetlite was the next cheapest option here. I had been warned by a few people against Royal Nepal
Cost - Moderate (~Rs. 15000), Time taken - Moderate (<36 hours), Chances of being stuck in a landslide - Minor (only while entrained)
Needless to say it was option 3 that we chose. So then people it's all done. Train tickets through IRCTC (man this site is really good when it works) & Jelite flight tickets through an agent.
Hotel bookings for ~1200 INR including taxes though no breakfast. Now I need to go to the mattresses and pray that my name is among those who are in the 35% pass rate :)
Wish me luck people!
4 hours ago
