For the modern Australian cricketer, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi are now as much ‘home’ as Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane.
The heat, the food, the culture – and even the pitches – are no longer foreign to Australia’s biggest earning stars.
The roadblocks which hampered Australia’s Test touring sides, even when the undisputed world No.1, are quickly being removed.
Currently on a limited overs tour of India, with the first of one seven one-day clashes to be played in Pune on Sunday night AEDT, the scenes are familiar for many in the squad.
For some this season, even Australia has felt like less of a home than the sub-continent.
Seven members of the current squad were involved in the gruelling two-month Test tour of India earlier this year.
For those who followed that up with both Indian Premier League and Champions League T20 action, such as Shane Watson, James Faulkner and Glenn Maxwell, the better part of six months will be spent in India in 2013.
Throw in a three-month Ashes tour in the middle of the year and it doesn’t leave much time to spend with friends and family back “home”.
“(India) is a home away from home,” the explosive Aaron Finch, who has played with both the Rajasthan Royals and Pune Warriors in the IPL, explains.
“It’s just that guys play so much in the subcontinent now.
“In years gone by it was only an Australian tour that you got to play there.
“Now you’ve got IPL and Champions League … there’s all these tournaments you play over there that you become familiar with the conditions.
“You become familiar with the place.
“It is a place you have to embrace otherwise it can be a really long tour.
“Guys are there year after year, there’s nothing out of the ordinary to expect.”
Finch first toured India as a 17-year-old in an under-19s squad, and admits the experience was jarring.
He had good moments, such as interacting with kids on the street who knew more about Finch’s career than he did, with more confronting ones.
“That was a big ‘wow’ factor,” he said.
“I think the first couple of times you go you get shocked by everything and you get a bit overawed by it all.”
But this will be Finch’s third trip there this season – and nothing bothers him anymore.
It’s why India is losing it’s intimidation factor on the field, and partly why Australia has enjoyed limited overs series wins on the subcontinent in two of their past three tours.
Their Test inadequacies are impossible to avoid – the record books speak for themselves.
Australia have won just one Test series on Indian soil since 1970 – the historic 2-1 victory in 2004 when the silky-skilled Damien Martyn posted two critical centuries to be named man of the series.
Finch hopes that is about to change.
“I think it can only give us confidence that we’ve played there so much,” he says.
“And the more you play there the more confident you get in your game, your plans and you come up with different ideas.
“Even playing IPL with Indian players and getting advice off them on how to play the local wickets is crucial.”
As stand-in skipper George Bailey adds, many of Australia’s opponents on this tour are teammates for the rest of the year.
“That’s one of the great things about the IPL,” he said.
“Over the years we’ve played at a lot of the grounds we’re about to play at and all of our players have played with and against a lot of the Indian players and vice versa.
“We know a lot of their strengths and weaknesses and know a lot about personalities.”
Cricket has come a long way from the days when champion leg-spinner Shane Warne would bring baked beans on tour to remove the possibility that his beer belly would suffer from the Delhi variety.
