July 3-5: The Flight

The beginning of my trip started somewhat rocky. I missed my flight due to a mistake on my part (note to self: learn to read 24 hour time) so rather than flying from Boston to Chicago to Delhi, I flew from Boston to London to Mumbai to Delhi. Sleeping was difficult on the plane due to two factors: 1) my chair didn’t recline on the Boston to London flight and 2) the flight attendant on the flight from London to Mumbai flight insisted on waking me up whenever a savory snack or meal was served. While I understand the importance of eating, sometimes a girl just wants to sleep! Once landing in Mumbai (at 2am), I took a 10-minute bus ride from the plane to immigration, got my necessary clearance, gathered my luggage, and headed into the sea of people needing to board buses back to their terminals. The vast majority of people in the mass had trollies piled high with bags and boxes of every shape and size so occasionally, someone on airport staff would notice little ol’ me with my one roller bag and one backpack and direct me to go straight ahead...until I hit another bottle neck and was forced to stop. I was so tired and clueless at this point that I just took it all in and had faith that eventually I’d get to my terminal, which I did with plenty of time to spare.

The last leg of my journey was a short 1 ½ hour flight from Mumbai to Delhi and I spent it sitting next to a sweet, elderly Punjabi man. We bonded over Bhangra and I showed him photos of me dancing, which he thoroughly enjoyed. When the Indian meal came (that’s right, there was a meal on that short of flight!), he explained to me what everything was and how best to eat it. Being completely stuffed, I put my head back and closed my eyes only to be slightly jarred a couple of minutes later when my seat suddenly tipped back! As it turns out, my new friend saw I was a bit tired so decided to help me out by reclining the seat for me. So, although my flight started out a bit rough, it had a nice ending.