Taking your pet on a family holiday is a real possibility, Abhilasha Ojha is pleased to learn.
Sunil Gomes wanted to take his nine-month-old baby for a holiday. They had had little Shandy’s first holiday in Goa, but now the time for his second holiday had came around. “Shandy had fallen sick the first time round, so our second holiday needed to be just a couple of hours away” from Mumbai, explains Gomes.
What followed was a weekend getaway at Alibaug’s very trendy Sidz Cottage. At Rs 6,000 for six members (weekend rates) and customised meals for Shandy (average cost Rs 100-250, depending upon the preference of meals: vegetarian or non-vegetarian), the trip, says Gomes, was worth it.
Come Easter and the family plans to visit a hill station in north India. The family will travel by train, and Gomes is already doing his homework to ensure that the vacation is a memorable one. He’s booking a four-berth compartment (AC first class or first class) to ensure that the “baby of the family” is comfortable and doesn’t cause any discomfort to others.
Shandy is the Gomes’ adorable young German Shepherd, who is “a family member and not just a dog”, as Gomes says, very firmly.
Wait a minute! Shandy is a pet dog that Gomes takes on vacations? How do you take the pet on flights or trains or even on long drives, for that matter? Forget the travel, do fancy resorts and hotels even care for pets, prepare their food, allow them access to the lobby area, let them play on the beach while you sit in a lounge chair and lazily sip a cool drink? Or, would it be pardonable to let a pet stretch itself out on a lounge chair next to you even as it yawns, scratches itself and nibbles on a chewy stick and plays with a squeaky toy?
Anupama Vinayak laughs heartily when I voice my concerns. “Banjo, my four-and-a-half-year-old Labrador loves the beaches,” says the founder of Petvacations.in, a fascinating website that has a complete list of resorts, hotels (including five-star hotels) and service apartments where pets can accompany their parents (we won’t use the term “owners” here) on holidays. Started six months ago (“Back then, people couldn’t stop laughing at us,” remembers Vinayak) the website, with 10,000 members already, not only has an exhaustive list of places to stay but also offers lists of veterinarians, ambulance services and pet stores from Shimla to Kanyakumari, as Vinayak tells us.
“It’s a relatively new trend in India, and our idea was to first introduce the hospitality industry to the growing needs of this new client base,” she says.
What are the logistics involved in taking a pet on a family vacation? Vinayak’s expert advice is, first, to start acclimatising pets on shorter trips by road.
While most hotels (Vinayak doesn’t give us names of any five-star hotels, even though she has customised holidays for some members there) charge Rs 2,000-5,000 for keeping pets in rooms, Four Seasons, a relatively new entrant in the hospitality industry, does not charge extra.
And, although spending a vacation with pets comes with a burden of paperwork and can put some strain on the wallet, a number of budget hotels (Rs 500-800 approximately, excluding meals, per night for a pet) are also there. There may, however, be some restrictions on movement: “Your pet can’t enter a discotheque, sorry,” smiles Vinayak.
She even remembers customising one two-month-long getaway for a family, from Mumbai to Kerala, by road, for Rs 2.5 lakh. She organised a Toyota Innova, and the family had stopovers at Goa, Mangalore, Kozhikode and Kumarakom, to name a few places, and the pet even stayed comfortably with the couple for three days on a houseboat!
Then there was the lady for whom Vinayak customised a weekend break at a very luxurious farm in Mangaon on the Mumbai-Goa highway. “Her pet dog was diabetic and needed four designated meals, at an interval of three-four hours every day,” she explains. A stay at a luxurious resort like this one costs Rs 5,000 per person on a twin sharing basis. In addition, the cost for keeping a pet in the room comes to Rs 500 per night, excluding meals. Spacious farms and luxurious cottages usually cost Rs 5,000-8,000.
For those who want to travel with their pets by air, Jet Lite, Jet Airways and Indian Airlines are the only three airlines that allow pets to travel in the cargo hold (Rs 30,000-40,000 is the cost of booking pets on international flights). It’s a good idea to inform the pilot in writing, prior to the flight, so the temperatures can be adjusted accordingly. Pets below 10 weeks of age are not allowed to travel by flight. “If a pet weighs around 30-35 kg, the cost is as much as your own airfare,” explains Vinayak.
He says it’s a better idea to check in your pet as, “I hate this, but it’s called ‘excess baggage’.” This way, she explains, your pet is on the same flight as you, and not on any different flight, and it’ll cost Rs 10,000 approximately.
While Vinayak is stunned at the growing number of calls she’s getting from NRIs who’ve been laid off in the US — “They are coming back with their pets” — she’s also fielding enquiries from foreigners who want to see India with their pets.
And even as I narrate the possibility of a holiday with my pet, my little Foxie is wagging her tail in approval and already saying “Woof!” to that.
