Wednesday, January 9th - San Francisco to London
I am sleeping lightly, waiting for the jolt of the alarm and sensing that I am catching a cold. For weeks everyone around me has been sick and I stubbornly refused to catch their bugs. There was simply too much work to keep up with during the Christmas season to even consider the luxury of a cold. Since the holidays, life has continued to be stressful as I checked things off the to-do list so that my 20 year old son John and I can make this trip to India and the UAE with a relatively clear conscious.
Art, John and I drive two cars up to San Francisco and leave John’s older Lexus at his house near S.F.S.U. We will return from our trip just one day before his semester begins so he needs to be settled in before our adventure begins. The three of us climb into our new Prius V and Art drives us to S.F.O. dropping us at the curb of British Airways. After the perfunctory curbside hugs and kisses, Art reminds John to “take care of your mom,” and John and I enter the revolving glass doors to the international terminal. Our flight is not for 3 hours and this part of the terminal is exceedingly quiet. John steers us to the nearly vacant, British Airways counter and I hand over our passports. The attendant who checks us in prints and tears off two luggage tracking tags and attaches one to John’s duffle bag and then another to John’s duffle bag. I wait for her to print out another tracking tag and when she does not, I point out that she has put both of the luggage tags on John duffle bag and none on my suitcase and she mutters apologetically explaining that she was distracted, talking. There is also some confusion concerning the terminal we arrive at in Heathrow London, versus the terminal we depart from. In London, our bags must make a transfer between terminal 4 to terminal 5 and I am less than optimistic that they will arrive in Deli with us.
London to Deli,
We have a 6 hour layover in London and we exit through customs to investigate tube and express train options into Covent Gardens. Our time is just a little too short, our energy level low and the weather is nippy so John and I decide to wait it out at the airport. We reenter the terminal and it takes us an hour to navigate our way to our departure gate at terminal 4, via glass habitrails, escalators and airport trains. We pass through security again and find ourselves once again in a maze of duty free shops and a melange of multinational transit passengers. It is late morning our time, but the overpriced airport restaurants are no longer selling breakfast and we decide that coffee is not a wise option with another overnight flight ahead, so we decide to adjust to London time and settle for an early dinner. John orders a club sandwich and I order fish and chips. John has a beer and I have a glass of wine. We continue wandering the terminal for another hour before John collapses prone on a stretch of benches at the far end of the terminal, backpack under his head for a pillow. I have trained him well. Our gate will still not be announced for two hours so it is up to me to sit vigilance, without dozing, lest we miss our flight. I find an internet area and shove 1 pound into the machine and manage to successfully log into Hotmail for 10 minutes and send mail home.
The flight between London and Deli seems longer than our flight between S.F.O. and London. Neither of us own a watch and with our smart phones on airplane mode, we float in limbo. Once in our seats, we each take half an Ambian and are asleep before the plane takes off. I vaguely remember the stewardess tapping my shoulder and asking if we want dinner but I grunt, decline and sleep. John is contorted into his seat, his lanky body a pretzel of discomfort. He is wearing his baseball cap with his hood pulled up over it and his face barely showing. He reminds me of a duck billed platypus. Some hours later, I wake, slip on my headphones and turn on my personal entertainment screen. I choose a Bollywood Movie to ease myself into consciousness and into the spirit of India.
Friday – January 11th. We Arrive in Deli
Indian customs is easy but the immigration attendant raises an eyebrow that our visas are good for 10 years. He comments that that must be a mistake and I smile and assure him that it is not; that we expect to have a wonderful time and be back again soon. The young couple, at the adjoining counter, are not having such an easy time of it; something is amiss with their paperwork. We are excited and rested and practically skip to the baggage claim where we wait anxiously, watching the revolving loop of suitcases hoping to soon be reunited with our luggage. Our bags are slow in coming and I try to reassure myself that since we checked in early at S.F.O. our bags would have been some of the first on and therefore the last off. Mine suitcase is eventually regurgitated from the shoot with John’s duffle following moments later. No one checks our tags when we exit the terminal but when we are finally at the hotel and unpack, I find a inspection tag inside my bag.
No comments:
Post a Comment