What with some gloomy news on the health front and impending penury from the pension cut, there was only one thing to do run away to Kathmandu.
The plan was to take the so-called ill gotten FNPF gains of the so-called Head of Household, leave the home, dogs and grandma to the tender mercies of the children, and dash off to fulfill our youthful fantasies of climbing mountains, lurking through medieval masonry and eventually partying with friends in the posh part of New Delhi.
It may have taken us decades to finally hit the hippie trail, but trust me, the hippies are still there.
From greying wrinklies who have been taking third class trains from Trivandrum to Goa and Kathmandu since the 1960's, to bright young things in floppy trousers, ethnic blouses and dreadlocks, they inhabit the cheap hotels and ethnic eateries from Chennai to Calcutta.
I took a shot at dignity in baggy cotton shalwar kameez suits and merely looked wrinkled, especially after a night on the second class two tier sleeper, while the Head of Household stuck to his own inimitable style of t shirt and daggy shorts with multiple pockets in which he could lose, repeatedly, his wallet, his passport, the train tickets, the plane tickets, and the address of the hotel.
The triumph of the tour so far is that he actually did climb a mountain and view the majestic Himalayas.
The trek took three days and five days to recover.
Meanwhile I stayed in the mountain lakeside resort, shopped for three days solid and recovered instantly.
Even better, I got to view the majestic Himalayas from the bus stand when the clouds parted and the Asian haze lifted just before we left for our next destination.
The low point was when he managed to lock a travelling companion in the hotel room, leaving him to scream for help out a second floor window in uptown central Darjeeling.
Much of the travel was spent on those totally terrifying bus rides along winding mountain roads that have hairpin bends, dead drop cliffs and other road users who seem determined to kill you.
The good thing about being an aged pensioner with a precarious future is that you really don't care, and do far more daring things -- just like Talei Burness who jumped out of an aeroplane for her 70th birthday earlier this year screaming 'this is for the pensioners'.
She'd asked me to go along, but to my shame my only contribution was to suggest she take along some pamphlets outlining the pensioner power platform to shove out over Suva.
Wiser heads suggested the air crew were more likely to shove Talei out over Suva if she tried any political tricks, so the pamphlets were put on hold.
I did try shouting 'this is for the pensioners' as we lurched around a particularly hairy chasm, but the bemused populace of six Nepalese, a couple of dogs and several yak looking things apparently didn't understand English.
We finally dug out our party clothes and hit Delhi to visit one of Fiji's more illustrious sons who has a serious job with the World Bank, and an equally illustrious daughter of Fiji who is working with isolated communities of weavers to promote their exquisite and endangered craft to wider markets.
A lovely time was had by all, as they say, and we had a 20kg box of goodies to send back to Fiji to prove it.
While we were having a good time forgetting our woes and being disgracefully old, we discovered a Fiji delegation led by Commodore Bainimarama had also come to India to strengthen bilateral relations.
It could be one of his better ideas....the India we are visiting is vastly different from the country of earlier visits.
There is a hugely improved infrastructure, in many places the ordinary rural roads beat our highway hands down and their highways are greatly impressive; the train service is first rate and on time; lots of people are getting good jobs and good pay to the point where you can't recruit top qualified cheap labour from India any longer; commercial agriculture is rocketing; and investment is booming.
A 20 hour train ride with a team of financial advisor whizz kids confirmed what we had already seen across the country.
Fiji is hoping to encourage Indian financiers as 'a developing nation with many opportunities to invest in'.
They may well be attracted by the zero percentage fiscal duty on manufacturing equipment and agriculture inputs, but watch out it doesn't work the other way around.
India banks are paying almost 10 per cent interest, which makes me wonder why my Fiji bank has got away with paying less than one per cent on a term deposit for years.
We didn't have time to discuss this with our World Bank contact in Delhi because the lure of the open road got to us first.
There is something uniquely exciting about sharing the tarseal with Honda heroes, daredevil autorickshaws, Vespa virgins in respectable saris gunning their engines at the intersections while waiting for passing elephants, occasional camels, grossly overloaded buses and sturdy taxis.
Of course there are still huge problems of overpopulation and the subsequent pressure on all infrastructure including schools, transport, housing, social services and the disposal of an overwhelming amount of polluting rubbish, and there are heartrending scenes of poverty and degradation.
But it is a country with a vision that people seem to believe in with a degree of justification.
Its official retirement age is 58, I believe, and everyone 67 years and older gets the respect -- and the substantial fare discounts -- that they deserve, wherever they come from.
A rough pension calculation suggests we could afford to live on India's trains, well fed and well rested in air-conditioned second class, two-tier sleeper carriages, for the rest of our lives.