Arrival Blessings

Hard to say that 14 hours on a plane is uneventful. But, that's pretty much what it was. I had read that Air India was on the same "level" as Air China. This was not good news to me when I read it. Barbara and I had mentally prepared ourselves for another horrendous flight. Not so. The seat backs had a personal entertainment system (if you can call any system that has the Wolverine movie and the travesty of Hollywood, Clash of the Titans entertaining). We could control our own air (as you can on every other plane in the universe...minus Air China). The food was so-so with the exception of dinner. The chicken curry was pretty fantastic for airline food. The only downside to the flight was the duration. 14 hours on a decent airline is still 14 hours on a plane.

We arrive into the Indira Gandhi airport a little ahead of schedule. This is pretty surprising as we've now had to circle the airport a couple times due to heavy rain. So much rain that we leave rooster tails of water with the landing gear on the runway. We pull up to the jet way and we are parked in at least a foot of water. Yeah, a lot of water.

We collect our bags from the carousel and move towards the exit. Barbara and I are a little taken aback when we see bare footed guys with squeegee brooms in their hands pushing water out of the arrival area of the terminal. We make our way outside to meet up with our guide to find the roads are covered in water...almost a foot deep of water. According to Shankar, our guide, about a half hour before we landed, the arrival terminal was swimming in over a foot of water as well. Seems that the end of monsoon season has not quite arrived this year. Most everyone was walking around barefoot, carrying their shoes with their pant legs rolled up. It took quite some time to collect everyone together with their luggage and get to the tour bus.

Shankar told us that it could take quite some time to get to the hotel due to the water on the road. We should all feel free to relax and take a nap while we made our way there. I spent quite a bit of the trip watching the traffic patterns. All this time, I thought China was crazy, traffic wise. That's nothing. The road that we were travelling on had 3 lanes painted on it. Depending upon what 30 foot section of the road you were currently on, there could be anywhere from 4 to 6 lanes of traffic in those 3 lanes. If you can fit your vehicle into a slot, it's a lane. At one point I watched cars turn around and go back the way they came. Yeah, on the wrong side of the road. Imagine that! The I-5 is backed up due to some sort of traffic collision. Instead of waiting until the next exit to turn around, you just pull a u-turn right there in the middle of the free way and drive back to the exit you want. It's crazy! Crazy insane!

Tired from the flight, I finally doze off on the way to the hotel. Barbara has been out now for some time. We are abruptly woken by the lights coming on and Shankar announcing we have arrived at our hotel. We are to leave our baggage with him and the bellhops will bring it up to our rooms. Just bring your 'carry on' bags with you. Those bags go through xray machines like airport security before they are allowed to be taken into the hotel. We are given necklaces of marigolds and told that in India, the guest is as a god. Someone is waiting on the other side of the metal detectors (they apparently take security very seriously) to apply a red dot the each of our foreheads. The red dot is called Tilak and from what I understand, this is a blessing.

The room is pretty awesome. The hotel is likewise. There is a large window between the bathroom and the rest of the room that can be shuttered closed, or left open as a shower viewing area. Not quite sure what that's used for, in all honesty. Barbara and I figure that it's just part two of the monkey love rooms that we get while on these trips.

Dedicated to staying up as late as we possibly can in order to combat jet lag, we order room service and unpack a bit. Once the food arrives, we are in heaven. Too late we thought of taking pictures of what the food looked like when it arrived.

Tomorrow begins the tour proper.