Getting to Delhi

Part of the journey of going to India is actually getting there. I felt unbelievably anxious about the actual journey there because I was leaving Winnipeg at 1:45 in the afternoon and getting to India at 10 o’clock at night the next day. And of course, the flight to India from Montreal was 14 hours and 1/2 hours! It seemed daunting and undoable.

You never know what to pack for these long, unknown journeys, but as Jeremy said, you will have everything you need on the flight so don’t worry about it. And he was absolutely right. Business class is the only way to fly on these long international flights. You have your own pod so you don’t have to worry about being in anyone else’s space or anyone being in yours and they take care of everything, all your needs and you can watch anything you want because of what they have available. OK so I watched A Christmas story and Grease, movies I’ve seen a million times but everything felt so strange so it was nice to have something that was familiar. It brought me comfort.

Business class really had everything. You can eat constantly if you want to. It seems to have an endless supply of food and drink and conveniences.

But the best part is the ability to lay down and just go to sleep that makes the time go by so much faster and that is what I did. I slept on the flight from Winnipeg to Montreal. Then I slept in the airport waiting to get on my flight to India. OK so I was stressed and when stressed I sleep.

It all worked out for the best.

Until I landed in Delhi, then that was another story because I found the airport had a billion people whose job it was to provide assistance of one kind or another, in all kinds of areas but yet I walked right out of security without getting my bag.

Part of this is my mother and her lack of information combined with misinformation that led to this catastrophe and of course, part of it is because they do things differently here than they do in Canada where you have to exit from security to get your luggage. That’s not the case here. And to make it even more confusing they have two levels of security. One is where the luggage is and then there’s a second level that is, for - I don’t know what. But if you leave the first level, you can’t go back even if you left without your bag like a complete idiot! It took quite some time and effort and asking everybody that works there. They kept pointing me to another person and then another person. I’m talking to an endless array of uniformed people and talking to my mother on the phone and her directing me but I couldn’t get the correct information because part of it is that they don’t understand my English-Punjabi and I don’t understand their Hindi.

But anyway, I could tell the people were feeling quite sorry for me and someone actually said “this elderly woman has been waiting a long time. Can somebody please help her?“

And I thought well there must be some elderly woman hanging around me, a pretty young thing but alas, they were referring to me. In any event, I did get my bag and was asked for money by the guy whose job it was to help me. But it is a foreign country, and they do things differently. And the real lesson of this experience was that I really have to check and double check what my mother is telling me! Not a great start but a great lesson right at the beginning of this incredible journey!