Coming from California, I am one of those traveling the farthest for this event. Almost halfway around the earth, of course. In the past I’ve done the trip in two 8-to-10-hour jumps. This time, like the previous, I did it in a short jump to Chicago followed by a 15-hour flight to Delhi.
The flight was delayed for almost 45 minutes taking off from Chicago by a small phenomenon – the Airbus 380 on its first flights from France into the US. One of these two-decked planes – which will be the largest commercial passenger jets in the world – had landed at O’Hare airport some time earlier, and was just taking off ahead of my flight. Maybe you can tell me why, but the pilot reported “they have to ‘turn around’ the runway before we can take off.” This process, which usually takes fifteen minutes took nearly an hour.
So at this point what was planned as a 15-hour flight looked like it would be a 16-hour trip. 15 hours is about all the time most people can really stand being on an air flight. The 777 makes it a pleasant enough journey, as there’s some space between seats and you don’t have the person in front of you reclining into your lap – or “laptop” as may be the case. And for me a high point is that they serve Indian vegetarian food on the flight – yes, airline food is a highlight for me – at least on this flight. A chance to get a little head start on the curry, lentils and yogurt!
I forego the bollywood movies and mostly sleep and read a couple hundred pages of Neil Stephenson’s The Confusion (Volume two of his Baroque Cycle). It seems that these (three) 800-page books will be my traveling companion to India multiple times, as I only get around to reading them once in a while, and I only completed Volume One on my previous trip to India.
And just before landing, I remembered to do one of the things that has been my nemesis on previous trips – I adjust the clock in my camera. It seems that one of the most difficult things to do – perhaps even impossible – is to re-set the EXIF dates on digital photos once you’ve taken them – so if the camera is 12.5 hours “off” from local time, all of the times on my photos sort out crazily when imported into the computer. This time I fixed it in advance!
Arrival in Delhi is smooth, and actually on-time, as somehow we have picked up time swinging south of Moscow and then over Afghanistan and Pakistan (as usual) and down to Delhi. Pick up my bag and off to the hotel.
[posted with ecto]
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