Arrival in India

After 3 days travelling and 3 flights I am feeling slightly jet lagged. The Easyjet flight from Inverness to London went without adventure until we landed, or you could say crashed. It seemed like the pilot forgot to flare the aircraft and hammered the aircraft into the Tarmac.

An overnight stay at a hotel saw me rise at 7am for my flight to Delhi. On check in I was upgraded to world traveller plus, thanks to a cheeky wee email Aaron had sent before hand. Cheers mate. The upgrade included the perk of added leg room and noise reducing headphones. It was great. Back at economy class, It looked like herded cattle had been crammed into a small pen. The 8 hour flight passed with the help of 3 films including Transformers: Dark side of the moon. 

My next hurdle on arrival at Delhi Airport, at 2315 local time, was to get through customs. It seems like the Indians aren't accustomed to the British way of queuing. They are quite happy to barge past or let 10 members of their family who are several places behind, jump in front of them. This made a tired young man very unhappy.

After a 5 hour nap in the airport lounge, I woke at 7am to meet up with Aaron and Claire who had been on a later flight. Breakfast was in order so we went on the hunt for some food. Never before have I had so much trepidation about eating. We were worried about having Delhi belly on the first day so we decided to go for the safe option, a McDonalds, healthy! Aaron and I order our meal without any salad or ice in our coke. Confident we had successfully ordered our first 'Indian' meal we tucked in. After only 2 bites Claire pointed out that the mayonnaise could be a source for the Delhi belly. No further bites were taken.

After some further discussion we realised that even washing our hands could be a source of Delhi belly, as the water is not meant to be too healthy out here. (They say malaria tablets make you paranoid). Sanitizer was soon bought.

Check in for our internal flight to Bagdogra came with a nice surprise. As I hadn't booked an extra bag for the flight, as it was impossible either over the phone or online, I was expecting a hefty bill for my extra 20kgs. Luckily for both Aaron and I we weren't charged a penny.

Our flight to Bagdogra was due to depart at 1115. The aircraft we were stuffed into was like being inside a hot tin can. A nice tin can though.  We eventually got airborne at 12.  During the flight I noticed that I was the only blonde on the aircraft. All I could see were dark haired heads, including Aaron, Claire and another westerner. There was only one other colour on board, and that was grey, however there were two of them. I was unique - for a time. 

I had booked a meal for the flight and again I had some trepidation about the food I was about to eat. The meal was something I had never come across before and it was for a veggie. It consisted of rice, some sort of veg and veggie meat, which looked like chicken but had a cheesy texture to it, covered with some sort of sauce. After eating half of it, I could eat no more and decided to move onto dessert - you can't go wrong with dessert - and I was right. The dessert was a cross between semolina and custard with some lumpy bits thrown in. It looked disgusting but thankfully it tasted better than it looked.

I was seated to a gentleman named Adul, who happened to work for the Indian MOD and was an aircraft engineer. After some discussion we eventually swapped pictures of the aircraft we worked on. We had a good old chin wag, which helped the time go by. I also spoke to a girl who sounded American and I was careful not to ask, where about from America she was from. It was just as well, as she was Canadian.

I am currently writing this blog on board the aircraft and we are due to land shortly. On arrival in Bagdogra we are being picked up by jeep to transport us to this hills, where I expect there won't be a 3G signal. This could therefore be my last blog for 9 days. I will still continue to write but might be unable to post them until my return to Delhi. Until then you will be kept in suspense.