We knew an extra special remembrance date would hit the calendar smack bang in the middle of the trip and so we’d aimed to be as far off the grid, and in the most spellbindingly exotic of locations, for when it did.

Tucked in a tiny eastern pocket of the Bay of Bengal (technically still India but way, way off the mainland’s beaten track), the intoxicatingly beautiful Andaman and Nicobar Islands are actually closer to Thailand and Myanmar, but as they belong to India, it was quite easy for us to hopscotch from Trivandrum in Kerala across to Chennai in Tamil Nadu, and from there to Port Blair – the capital and largest city of the island group, and population a mere 100,000 (compared to Chennai’s 7 million and the 3 million of Rajasthan’s Jaipur). Apples and oranges, chalk and cheese – you get the picture.

And almost as if to exaggerate the insanely rich, colourful and dramatic differences between these two chapters of our Indian adventure, the travel gods bookended our basking on Time Magazine’s once upon a time best-beach-in-Asia with Chennai, a hustling, bustling, hotchpotch of ridiculous city action.

We arrived mid-afternoon for one-night-only in state capital Chennai (formerly known as Madras) planning a lazy, easy mooch around, while we got to know all the best nooks and crannies, and cracks and crevices, Chennai’s got to give. And we found them, and then some!

Kicking things off with more than a few cuba libres and whiskey sours in the opulent bar of the hotel, stacked to the brim with weirdly-good contemporary art (the best of Chennai’s modern art scene), we jumped straight in a tuk-tuk headed in the opposite direction of the designer boutiques and fashion-forward extravagant side of town to Ranganathan Street – it’s claim to fame – notoriety as one of the most crowded streets in the world! And it was completely brilliant too – street food hawkers, market stalls, worshippers, musicians, kids, kittens, chickens, goats, cows, dogs, and (of course) the ‘everywhere-you-turn-there’s-guys-on-bikes’ – they were all here and it was the strangest, nonsensical blend of urban life set against a backdrop of shouting, beeping, barking and hawking that you could ever expect to come across.

In amongst it, hidden in a little back street (next to a tiny grocer where Jit bought a can of ‘Just Call Me Maxi’ which has to be up there with the most imaginative (and puzzling) name for a can of men’s deodorant), we found one of the best in the world (and oldest in Chennai) tea stalls or ‘chai kadais’, where for just 10 rupees (20 cents NZ) we had the most incredible, short and sugary-sweet masala chais – so piping hot and spicy they burnt the back of your throat but just so moreish you couldn’t get enough of the stuff.

It was all so good for the soul, we loved every minute of it, and afterwards, a bit like being spat ashore by a crazy-mad but tender-loving sea, we found ourselves washed up high above it all, once again in a rooftop garden bar overlooking the untamed madness that was curling round the streets below, toasting what was now just forty winks away, waiting for us on the dazzling white sands of remote (and peaceful!) Havelock Island.

Waking up nice and early the next morning to get to the airport nice and early for our 2-and-a-bit-hour flight to Port Blair, and 2-and-a-half-hour ferry to the not-so-secret island, and having tended to my mosquito-ravaged body from the night before (a well-timed ‘note-to-self’ regarding insect repellent ahead of a tropical island getaway), we daydreamed about the next few days.

Next to no wifi, no crowds or traffic, and not a care in the world – time would finally stand still, the warm waves of the Indian Ocean would bring in the new and see off the old, books we’d lugged would finally get read, and the travel to-do lists with which we’d religiously complied could finally be forgotten. It couldn’t have come soon enough, and come hell or high water we were going to cherish, and relish, every minute of it. Here’s to you mum!