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| Typical Crowds in Chennai |
Jan. 1-2, 2013-Airline Torture
I don't know what day it is or the correct time. I'm in a tube
hurtling through the air for the last 10-13 hours. Don't even know how long
we've been up here. The program telling where we are & when we'll arrive is
down so I have no frame of reference. We were served dinner (not Indian food)
shortly after we boarded. It was 5 pm EST. We stayed up until about 9pm EST
then took our Ambien & went to sleep. I was shaken awake by a flight
attendant wanting me to put my tray table down so he could serve what might
have been breakfast. It was two slices of bread, one slice of cheese, &
lettuce. The seats are so hard I feel as if I've been at a day long Amish
meeting. My buns are numb & I reckon I got two hours sleep.
But my usual trip
meltdown came earlier than expected. I had an emergency root canal before we
left & I'm not sure the infection is healing well. To make matters worse
I'm starting to experience the same symptoms on the other side of my mouth. The
one thing I don't want in India is a tooth problem. I'm still taking amoxycilin
for the root canal & have another series to take if this doesn't do it. I
then have all kinds of other antibiotics to get me home.
Other than the hard seats, this Air India plane is now leaking
something from three of the bathrooms that has saturated the floors in the
aisle. I know this because David just stepped in it. Every once in awhile I get
a whiff of what smells like the deodorizer put in men's urinals. The bathroom closest
to us & the one I prefer to use has the toilet taped to the wall with
security tape marking when it was inspected. Every once in a while I remember
that three hundred people are using eigtht bathrooms over a period of fifteen
hours. Now there are only six in use. I'm not including the "upper
classes." It gives me pause. David's control panel just stopped working. He said they want us to experience
India at its fullest as soon as we can. I reminded him that India is much
worse. When we landed in Delhi (early) before I could censor my thoughts my
mind said, " That wasn't too bad." Hmm! Being on terra firma does
strange things.
Meet & Greet
We met some of the people in our group while waiting for the
flight at JFK. Some who took the pre-trip to Sri Lanka will meet us in Chennai
(formerly Madras) but I think the rest are all here in this tube with us. We're
easy to identify. We're the Anglos with yellow luggage tags in a sea of Indians
returning home, visiting family, or as with the man next to me, going to a
wedding. When our tour-mates & we got off the plane in Delhi & were on
our way to baggage claim we realized they were with an OAT group going to the
North. Whoops! No use learning their names. Meanwhile, where are our folks?
We're now killing time with the one person on the plane who is on our tour. Tom
is a Lutheran pastor from Sonoma. He & David are bonding while I type.
We're hunkered down at a table in a cafe
having eaten a masala dosa. It's a thin crepe-like bread filled with
potatoes.
Since we landed early it stood to reason that our plane to
Chennai was late. We had ample time at the gate to meet others who were
actually on our trip. There's a huge military presence at the airport & we
were there long enough to witness shift change. I must say several of the
guards are attractive young women. I missed all but the meal served on the
flight to Chennai. I made up for lost sleep.
Walking out into the murky air as we deplaned the airport
around midnight brought me back to my old memories of India. There's a haze
even at this hour, however the smell isn't as pungent as I remembered. At the
terminal there was a cloying scent of camphor
which I traced to the toilets as I used my first squatter of the trip. I
may have waited a year too long to come here. The old knees aren't as nimble as
they used to be.
The drive to our hotel was through what we'd call rush hour
but here it's considered to be a breeze. Between motor vehicles, construction,
& pedestrians it was daunting.
Ah yes. I finally got my first whiff of eau d'India...sewage
with overtones of ammonia.
Charles, our tour director, was waiting for us at the hotel. It
will take some getting used to as far as understanding him but that will come.
We are sending this email to let you know we arrived safely (no lost luggage),
but we may not be in as close contact as we thought. WiFi is not free at this
hotel. It's $10 an hour. We'll find out more at orientation tomorrow.
Toby
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