12/8 - Left the house at 8:30a (EST). Flew from CLT to ATL, then ATL to JFK, and left JFK at 10:10p, so for 12+ hours, all we did was fly all over the East coast!
12/9 - Ate a decent dinner around midnight, and we're both watching movies. Dad & Suril are sitting right behind us, doing their own things. Baby in row in front of us cries a LOT. It's easy to ignore if wearing headphones and engrossed in something, but it's enough to annoy the crap out of you if you notice it. How can they cry so much? It certainly raises questions about whether we'll travel with a baby. I'm not willing to say never, but...
There are loads of entertainment options on the screen in front of us, but it's hard to imagine sitting here for 12 more hours.
Loving the travel sets our friends Noy & Mike sent to us for X-mas presents!
5:00a: I'm woken up by sounds of foil and see that they're serving breakfast (why?). We both want to sleep but decide we better eat. I'm dismayed to realize that we're only halfway there... how much more of this can I take? I get up to walk around and stretch.
8:00a: I wake up due to discomfort. My legs hurt and feel stiff and swollen (tree trunks come to mind). I stretch, move around in my seat (don't want to wake the guy next to me) and start listening to Timbaland's new album in an effort to get distracted.
We're currently at 40,000 feet, flying over Iran (flew around Iraq due to the no-fly zone there, I guess). At this height, it doesn't much matter what's down there, but we can see a mountain range.
M has been watching Stardust.
10:00a EST / 8:30p Indian Time: Woke up to eat a snack (why do they keep feeding us? and why am I hungry?). Played games for an hour. Watching The Bourne Ultimatum again. They handed us Immigration & Customs form, which leads me to believe we're getting close to the end!
11:30p (Indian time from now on): we land, go through Immigration, gather our bags, and breeze through Customs. We're amazed by the disorganized and crowded Mumbai airport. M says that with all the engineers India produces, surely they could design the airports better! He also saw the throngs of people and taxis at the airport and commented, "this is India!"
12/10 - We wait at a gate with no information, hoping we're at the right place to get on the flight to Ahmedabad (A'bad for short). That flight was coming from Newark and arrives 1 hour late. We board at 2:30a, to be told at 3:15a mid flight that there are minor technical difficulties and we must turn back to Mumbai. One, we're worried as to what these technical difficulties are, and two, we're wondering why we can't deal with them in A'bad seeing as we're halfway there.
We get back to Mumbai's airport to sit in a very warm plane for 1.5 hours with no idea as to what is going on. They do feed us however, which I've realized they will do no matter what on an international flight! We finally get going again at 4:50a to land in A'bad around 5:45a. Thankfully, we did not have to go through Immigrations or Customs as we had already done that in Mumbai.
We then wait 1 hr 10 min for all of our bags to come at the baggage claim. We were so relieved to see my cousins when we FINALLY got to leave the airport at around 7:30a!!!!!!!!!!!! My poor cousins had been waiting there for us since 2:30a having been told that's when we'd arrive.
So, we're here, and hopefully over the next 4 weeks, we forget about this long journey just enough to get on a plane back.
1 comment:
I was told that they feed you so often to help prevent jet lag. In any case, the actual "getting there" part always seems to be the most annoying ;) Great to hear you made it there safe though. I'm looking forward to hearing more about the trip!
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