Lessons Learned

We have been in Delhi for two days now, and Douglas has our whole house in order. The bags are unpacked, the moving boxes are emptied, and our new place feels like home already... with little help from me.

I hit the ground running yesterday with a 4:00am jet-lag alarm clock and I was flipping pancakes at 4:45am. I went to work and left Douglas to organize and decorate. I did great until lunch time and then the wave of exhaustion that neither tea nor coke could fight swept through my office. I forced myself to keep going, but by the time I made it home all I could do was curl up with my big fluffy Tibetan blanket. Meanwhile Douglas is still going strong. I probably mumbled under my breath for him to take it easy and call it a day.

It feels so good to be back in Delhi. Primarily because it is much cooler here than it was back in Indiana (how often can you say that?). It has been great to reunite with a few of our friends and the rest of the bunch should be arriving over the next two days. I hope no one has as much trouble getting here as we did.

Here is the long story of our travel chaos:

Our original itinerary was to leave Indianapolis at 4pm and have a two hour layover in Newark before flying non-stop to Delhi. So after loading the car and heading to lunch we got an email telling us the flight had been delayed by 45 min. No biggy... Then another delay email. Still no biggy... Then another... See a pattern? So I got on the phone. The nice lady moved us to a 2pm flight which had been delayed until 3pm which gave us enough time to rush across town to get checked in. Breezed through security. One delay after another and five hours later, just 15 minutes before the pilots were out of flight hours we are finally on our way. It was going to be a tight connection, but we figured since everything coming and going from Newark was delayed we would be OK. As we landed we checked online for the status of the Delhi flight and sank down in our seats when the message was "left gate... taxiing to runway". Had it been daylight I am sure I would have seen our plane pass us.

Two hours later the folks behind the counter had us re-routed on another flight through Toronto the following afternoon. We spent Monday night in a hotel outside the airport. Tuesday morning I had a feeling that our luggage would not be re-routed as easily as we were so we rescued it from Newark Airport luggage jail and took it to check it in for our new flight. Breezed through security. Delayed, delayed, delayed... feeling defeated and starting to get worried we arrived in Toronto with one hour until our next flight departs. We ran from the plane to immigration, ran down through baggage claim, ran up to check-in only to find out it was too late and the flight was closed. The look of terror, exhaustion, and my begging and pleading they agreed to let us on the flight, but told us we would have to run to the gate. We rushed through security, sprinted for what felt like 20 miles to gate 171. We made it to the gate and they were still boarding! We found our seats and collapsed. I send out a blanket apology to anyone we nearly trampled in Toronto.

We have never been so happy to be on the flight to Delhi, and were very happy to see our luggage come out first in baggage claim. The trip was a challenge but we remained positive the whole time; however we did learn that what we did would be impossible with a little Fabian and Lakshmi in tow.

-Chad-