Day 75 – 40 Hours of Travel

During our fourteen hour flight from LAX to Hong Kong, I was actually able to sleep about ten hours, thus minimizing the jet lag since we arrived in Hong Kong at 7 am. You may have notice that there is no entry for Wednesday, June 18… This is because we crossed the international date line half through our flight and thus virtually skipped the entire day. Rumor has it that we’ll get that day back on our return trip. : )

After a short layover (2 Hours) in Hong Kong (which was a really nice airport), we jumped onto our next flight to Dehli. The Dehli flight was five hours, but it went by relatively quickly as we were all up. After watching a movie and playing some spades on the plane, we had arrived.

Once is Dehli, we were excited to learn that all of our luggage had arrived, with the exception of April’s guitar (which I still find impressive since we came from Nashville, had to plane transfers and one airline switch). After collecting our bags and going through customs, we were forced directly outside. This is when we started a fun game of “Good Luck Figuring Out How to Get Back Into The Airport Without a Boarding Pass To Catch Your Next Flight”. After about 30 minutes of this game, along with two encounters with the “Elevator of Death”, we finally figured out that we were at the wrong airport and that we needed to take cabs to the domestic airport. And thats when the real fun began…

All of the taxis in Dehli are 1960’s Ambassadors (British make). Because we had so much luggage, they simply threw our gear on the roof rack (no tie downs) and then hit the gas! Because the speedometer was broken, I have no idea how fast we were going around those corners, but the car was definitely at full tilt. Delhi traffic was a trip… Scooters, Auto-Rickshaws, no speed limits, no traffic laws. Amazingly, we made it in one piece and with all of our luggage!

Once at the airport, which more closely resembled a bus station, we finally boarded our last two hour flight of the journey from Delhi to Bangalore on the glamorous Air India (the Southwest Airlines of India : )

Alas, we arrived in Bangalore and were greeted just outside of bag claim by our host Tom and our driver. From there, we headed straight for our apartment which was for visitors of the local Baptist Hospital. To our pleasant surprise, the place is really nice! It’s a three bed, three bath, tile floor pad equipped with all of the modern amenities one could ask for, including internet! Whoohoo!

As it was already 10 pm, we settled in, ordered a pizza (from Pizza Hut, of course) and headed off to bed.

God is wonderful. Thank you all for your prayers.

Until next time,
Omar