The gods must be happy with Bhaichand Patel, an incorrigible flirt, party-giver and a sporadic habitué of Page Three. Summer evenings in Delhi are usually unbearably hot. But on the night of the alfresco dinner of the former UN diplomat and writer, it suddenly turned pleasant. His elegantly cosy apartment in Sujan Singh Park — a hop, skip and jump from Lodhi Gardens — opens onto a vast lawn. There is a wisp of a wind blowing about as we sit outside. This is not one of our host’s packed-to-the-brim soirées. Many of the usual suspects are missing: the summer exodus has already begun. A couple on our table who are leaving for a cruise along the Turkish and Greek isles that very night, gulp down dinner before discreetly making their way to the door.

Now it’s place-dropping
Naturally, the topic of conversation diverts to travel plans, this summer and beyond. And, out pops the strapped-down competitive streak. Name-dropping is rapidly being replaced by place-dropping. Now that the burgeoning middle classes are on the move (the have-money-will-travel syndrome) the snobby sort, who recoil from places the hordes have already ‘discovered’, have to ferret out ever more elusive and exclusive destinations. It’s not easy for these avant-garde travellers, currently suffering from the ‘been there done that’ malaise: a certain fatigue has set in. Where are the poor BTDTs to go when it is increasingly difficult to go where few have gone before? Enterprising travel agencies with ubiquitous group tours and cruises have already let their secrets out of the bag.

Doing Turkey and Greece, Caribbean and Mediterranean cruises and even Alaska or Scandinavian fjords, was the big thing a few years ago for the more cosmopolitan lot. (I must add that the couple that night was not embarking on the much-trammelled route: for them, only the out-of-the-way, least-frequented isles would do.) A slow boat down the Mekong in Cambodia; following the Ho Chi Minh trail between the two Vietnams; a quick sortie to Xian in China to see the army of terracotta soldiers in the wake of the recent, marvellously curated exhibition in the British Museum in London; or just drinking wine and chilling out in ‘real’ villas on Lake Como in Italy (not the little houses called villas in Tuscany or Umbria) might separate the BTDTs from the rest. But only for a brief spell before the others catch on: their pockets might be new but they are as, if not more, deep.

So, where is the tony lot now heading to? Whenever I want to find answers to questions like this I turn to my good friend, a jet-setter with insatiable wanderlust. “Look, it is so crowded now,” she says, with a sigh. “Airports have become like train stations or bus addas. Ooof, those arrival and departure lounges, terrible. The only way out is to go by private jet or corporate-share jet.” Interestingly, it is no longer a question of where but how and with whom. You now have travelling parties — what you could call partying on the go. A few weeks ago the yachts of Vijay Mallya, the Mittals and the Ruias were parked in the Mediterranean Sea, off Nice. The Formula One race was on in Monaco. And, apparently, the best view of the track is from the sea. It was party time on board the swanky boats: the Ruia boat is said to have been the brightest. Jet-setters from India and NRIs from Europe had converged in Monaco to party and watch the race. No doubt the top-drawer globetrotters will assemble once again in Singapore, this time in September for Formula One’s first ever night race.

The world has certainly become their oyster, just as it was for the British before the sun set definitively on their empire. The international elite used to follow the seasons, converging at the same happening spots on the shrinking globe: Cape d’Antibes, St Barts, Mykonos…. Ironically, they ended up rubbing shoulders with the same crowd wherever they went, just as le tout Delhi or le tout Mumbai turns up in Goa come winter.

Our truly-arrived desis are doing much the same these days. Some have become part of the international elite, on the same track and have mastered the art of being at the right place at the right time. Closer to home groupie travel has also been at high tide. The IPL got them going on their jets, time-share or exclusive, to Jaipur, Chennai and Mumbai on the trail of the cricket matches — to cheer their teams and of course, party some more.

How deep are your pockets?
Apropos, the party set: those new deep pockets may be enough to be invited onto those jets and boats or into the villas perched above the Mediterranean increasingly owned by Indians or NRIs. But, just once in a while. Mere wealth, especially freshly minted, won’t get you into the inner sanctums of the elite. Nor will it give you a permanent seat in this rarefied circuit. There are unwritten rules of the game — of codes of behaviour, to be cracked to move up social ladders of all kinds.