Thinking of going to India with approx 1 year old - any suggestions?

[Benjaminsmummy]

We're planning on going to India when DS is somewhere around 1. He's one at the end of November and we're thinking of going some time between then and January/February for two or three weeks.

DH has been to India twice; once for 6 months during his gap year and once for about 8 weeks while we were at university. I've never been and we've always been saying we should do it some time, so we're planning!

We're intending to be in South India and move around a bit although not too much. Car safety is something that we're thinking about, as we would like to used a chauffered car for at least some of the time and are wondering about seatbelts.

We're intending to visit Kerala and parts of Tamil Nadu. Any thoughts on which airport to fly into, which airline to fly with, and any other tips on accomodation, or anything at all travelling with DS in India would be graefully accepted!

We just went to India in January with our kids who were 2.9 and 5.9 years old. We went for two weeks. We flew Emirates from London to Dubai and then Air India to Bangalore. Emirates was fab, Air India left a lot to be desired, it was late, and in my opinion just a terrible airline! But I wanted to fly Emirates as I belive it is one of the best airlines, and that was the only deal we could get at that time. It was great, they took really good care of the kids, had loads of great toys, loads of cool movies and games. That flight was (I think) about 7 hours, and the one on from Dubai was only 3. Once you get to Dubai there are a ton of flights to different parts of India. We used OPODO to look up flights

I am thinking that you may want to find one place and stay there for your first trip to India. That way you will have a more controlled enviroment for your little one? We went to see my in-laws, and I had been to India before(it was were we met, and I spent almost 2 years there) So we stayed only with family, so I was able to control everything my kids ate, how they bathed and where they slept. They still got sick, the older one worse then the younger one but we did eat out one day and they spent sometime playing with other children, so they could have gotten sick from them too(rotovirus is passed through salavia) It was not as bad as it could have been and it was nice to be in a family home to deal with it. I would pick up a book about keeping kids healthy when traveling and follow what it says. I bought Travelling Abroad with Children by Samantha Gore-Lyons. I would also carry any medicine you may need, like rehydration fluid mix, anti-diarrhoea(you should only use these if you need to travel and do not want to deal with diarrhoea, it is always best to let diarrhoea happen as it is taking toxins from the body) You can buy these things there, but I liked the idea of having them with me so we could deal with things as they came up and not have to run out to buy stuff. I brought metal water bottles for them with me(sigg I think?) and I would boil those and carry them with me and those were all the kids drank from. My inlaws had a water filter and we would use that and then boil that water to be safe.

I don't think Malaria is as bad in India as it is in Africa, and I have had friends who have had terrible reactions to anti malaria pills, so we don't take them when we travel. I treated the girl's pajama's with a heavy duty bug repellant, and they slept under nets most nights(again my in-laws had these already.) We also brought a plug in mosquito thing here and used that in our room. We also would apply bug spray when we went out in the evening.

As for car safety, it is hard to find cars with seat belts, we didn't and we honestly didn't bring carseats with us as we knew we wouldn't be using them. We hired an old ambassador and took the kids around Bangalore in it. We didn't do any major highway trips and I felt that traffic in the city didn't go so fast and we trusted our driver not to do anything crazy. There are maruti's that sometimes have seatbelts, but usually just in the front.