Travels and travails

This is the picture on the wall of my room at the India International Centre in Delhi -- auspicious, no? That crow looks a little pudgy to me. Perhaps it's been fed by all of the walkers, picnickers, and "laughers" (people who laugh for therapy; it's kind of cultish, really) in the Lodhi Gardens.

And indeed, the journey across the earth has been eventful. It started with my spending the night in a hotel in Newark, New Jersey, because my flight was at 8AM and my parents would have had to drive me from the city at 4AM to get there. Well, I got up at 4:30AM and took the hotel shuttle--along with a huge, raucous Lebanese family--to the airport. I stood in line to check in, handed in my passport, and --

"Ma'am, have you changed your name?"

"No."

"Have you bought your ticket yet?"

"Yes. Two months ago."

"We don't have you listed."

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I frantically handed the nice lady a copy of my itinerary from Orbitz.com, whereupon she raised her eyebrows, smirked, and pointed to some small print on the bottom.

"Ma'am, your flight leaves from JFK."

Note: thank goodness it was so early in the morning, because if I had had my wits about me and realized the gravity of the situation -- namely that I am completely incapable of traveling alone and should be locked up in a prison for unbelievably absent-minded individuals -- I would have broken down and cried right there. However, having had zero cups of coffee that morning, I calmly informed her that I was "freaking out," and could she help me?

Of course, the mess-up deserves some explanation. For those of you who were not with me during the two hours one early morning in July when I went to Orbitz.com and booked a ticket to India, just know that there are lots of flights to India that look very, very alarmingly similar. Most leave at 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning, arrive in London later that evening, and connect to flights that leave from Heathrow at 10PM to go to New Delhi. In my total indecision about which flight to pick -- and general confusion about this whole trip -- I chose a flight that left from JFK, but somehow thought I had picked a flight from Newark. Given the multiple confirmation e-mails that Orbitz.com sent me over the past two months, there is absolutely no excuse for doing what I did. But at least there is an explanation.

And, realizing how I made this mistake in the first place, I was relieved. Everything was going to be okay. There was, clearly, a 7:30AM flight leaving from Newark: it was the one I intended to book in the first place. I could get on it, or at least get on standby. It was even the same airline. So I paid a minimal fee, got an aisle seat, and flew to London on a virtually empty plane. Shaken by my apparently wild incompetence, I watched two movies that took my mind off of it: "The Kite Runner" and "Happy-Go-Lucky." I recommend both, should you be on a transatlantic flight with nothing to think about but your own utter incapability to do anything properly. Really, though, after everything, the flight was pretty idyllic.

Things continued to go well at Heathrow, where my beloved Terminal 3 was unnaturally empty. I went through connecting flight security with absolutely no waiting in line. When I got in the queue at Starbucks to enjoy my last cup of non-Nescafe coffee, the man in line before me had a voucher from his airline (he was delayed five hours) and bought me a cup of coffee. People are fantastic.

Unfortunately, that was when my troubles started again, and I'll keep this one short. I spilled coffee on my white shirt, got up to run to the nearest duty free and get a souvenir tee shirt to wear on the plane, realized once I had circled the duty free unsuccessfully that I had left my yoga mat at Starbucks, ran back to Starbucks where they were calling security because of an abandoned package, convinced the men at Starbucks that I wasn't a terrorist, got my yoga mat, went back to the "Glorious Britain" souvenir shop, and found a very ugly, ill-fitting long-sleeved tee shirt that says "City of London, England." I went to change in the ladies' room and shortly found myself sitting in the waiting area wearing a horrendously ugly tee shirt and feeling, yet again, rather silly.

Yet again, my flight was blissful. The plane was empty (people, fly Virgin Atlantic!!) and the people on it were far more interesting. Lots of large Indian men who, when asked whether they wanted chicken or vegetarian, answered "both, and some juice and coffee and tea, too." I had a whole row to myself, and slept like a baby. We arrived in Delhi at the sane hour of 11AM. The airport had been renovated since my last visit, there was no line to go through customs, and the place was deserted -- very, very few international flights land during the day. I took a taxi to "Lodhi Road" (technically Max Mueller Marg, after the nineteenth century "Orientalist" German scholar), and my driver only tried once -- and rather halfheartedly, at that -- to take me to a hotel run by his "cousin".

Successes of the first two days: finding the picture of the crow in my room, picking up my train tickets to go to Jaipur (today!), taking several autorickshaws without accident, miraculously escaping the monsoon downpours, finding out I actually have an apartment to live in when I get to Pune, sorting through beautiful clothes at FabIndia (actually located next to the market which was bombed only a few days ago), and having idly-sambar-chutney for breakfast.

Amazing. Jai Hind!