Fever pitch

With the cricket World Cup coming up, it's time to book an (expensive) passage to the Caribbean.

What is it?
It's less than a month to go for the cricket World Cup. And if you haven't done so already, you can book your place on one of the cricket stadiums in the Carribbean and also take a holiday if you book on one of the packages offered by SOTC Sports Abroad and Pyramid Travels.

After scanning through some 100 applications, the ICC named five companies as official agents for the event in India, but here we'll focus on what SOTC and Pyramid Travels have to offer.

Why are we writing about it?
You can always plan your own thing. But if you want a holiday that coincides with the cricket World Cup, it makes a good deal of sense to opt for a package tour. There are no direct flights to the Carribean and a package tour gives you an assured ticket to the West Indies.

Also as there are no direct flights, you'll have to fly in either via the US or Europe and hence will need to complete the visa formalities for either. And more importantly, to visit the Caribbean you'll require a Carricom visa: 10 countries like Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Jamaica, St Kitts & Nevis, Trinidad & Tobago and others joined hands last year, and now travellers need only a single permit to enter these countries.

However, getting a Carricom visa can take as long as a few months for most first-time travellers. Tour operators promise to take care of all of this so all that you need to do is sit back and enjoy the cricket and the beaches.

What's in it for me?
For starters, you get to see most of the matches live. The ones you miss, you can catch on the satellite feed as most tour operators offer a satellite feed of select matches. And if the men in blue disappoint, you at least have some travelling to look forward to.

About the travelling bit, SOTC offers 20, 12- and eight-night cruise packages that'll take you to Barbados and St Lucia, while Pyramid has a seven nights cruise package.

Both operators also offer a seven-day package to Antigua. Though we think that the cruise packages are way better. After all, what could be better than watch a match in the day, party at night and sail through the Caribbean through rest of the week.

SOTC cruise packages include Indian meals when you're on the ship, 24 hours free room service and a cocktail party as well. The Pyramid cruise package includes food and one night stay in a four-star hotel in Jamaica.

What are the damages?
If you want to travel in style, a suite with a balcony is what SOTC has to offer and that'll cost you anywhere between Rs 8,49,999 per person (20-night cruise) to Rs 5,29,999 (eight-night cruise).

Pyramid offers a deluxe verandah view room that costs Rs 3,53,333 per person. An inside cabin room on the other hand costs between Rs 3,06,666 per person (Pyramid) and Rs 3,68,999 (SOTC's eight-night cruise). All tour costs include airport taxes, air, accommodation and match ticket costs.

Take it or leave it?
Take it fast (Pyramid's Barbados package is already booked up), especially if you're the cricket crazy type. If you want something more exotic try getting a place on the luxury liner Silver Seas.

Vancouver-based Uniglobe Travels has tied up with the liner to offer a Rs 13.5 lakh package. However, get your booking done soon as there are only 140 suites on offer.

Help from Babel

Imagine if all the nations of the world spoke one language. The world would have been much better. The new ECTAVO iTRAVL translation handheld device is one such leveller. You can speak into the device and it pronounces the translation back to you.

The device is set to revolutionise the way people travel. With a full colour screen and an external speaker, the iTRAVL is able to accept additional language content than the ones it has been programmed for. An almost unlimited number of new language pairs can be added to iTRAVL.

The iTRAVL features the combination of a speaker-independent speech recognition system that allows the machine to understand an individual user's voice, professionally narrated real human voice output, and advanced TTS (text to speech) voice synthesis.

Featuring more than 14,000 travel-related phrases that can be voiced in two languages, it also provides users with a comprehensive bi-directional dictionary featuring easy-to-use sentence builder pronunciation for every word from banking and shopping to camping and sightseeing: everything the demanding traveller needs.

It even includes useful everyday conversation topics allowing one to immediately engage with foreign language culture.

Complete with the fun and effective FlashCards language-learning game system for optimal language learning: you can choose from four entertaining games to increase your vocabulary at your own pace. Enclosed within a water-resistant and dustproof case, this compact handheld translator also has an MP3 player, a multimedia card, world time, daily alarm, calculator, currency and metric conversion and a touch-screen.

Happy globe-trotting!

SNIPPETS

Finfare
Finnair is the latest to fall for Indian and Chinese passengers. In response to strong demand, the number of weekly flights to India will increase from the current to 12, while there will also be an increase in flights to China.

Finnair plans to fly to Mumbai, which will be served non-stop from Helsinki five days a week. Moreover, in mid-May the current three-weekly frequency for flights to the Indian capital Delhi will be increased to daily.

Non-stop services will continue over the next winter timetable season. The Chinese network will be further strengthened with the addition of a fourth weekly flight to Guangzhou.

Ticketless travel
Singapore Airlines has announced the availability of e-ticketing services across all its flights. This service will enable customers to purchase e-tickets for travel on Singapore Airlines flights departing from any of its gateways, namely, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Amritsar.

Furthermore, Singapore Airlines has also started encouraging Internet check-in facility at all the above stations. The Singapore Airlines customers in India can log on to its website singaporeair.com to pre check-in themselves on the flight.

The details such as passenger name, flight number, and travel date would be required to complete this process. Once the check-in is done, customers can simply collect their boarding passes and proceed for boarding. For customers with check-in baggage, the usual check-in process for baggage applies.