Our Trip to India

The story below is one I wrote about our trip from the island of Crete to India, where we visited Indira’s family.

We arrived safely in India yesterday after approximately 48 hours of flying. Actually, most of that time was spent in airports, but I digress. We left our house on Wednesday at about noon and drove to the airport to drop off the rental car we’d had for the past two weeks. The car had to be in by 1:30, but our plane didn’t depart until 9:00 pm. That meant spending most of the day in an airport smaller than the one in Eugene. We came prepared, though, with a crossword puzzle book and Wordle and similar activities, but we hadn’t planned on how uncomfortable the seats at the gate might be. As we went though security, the guy looked at our boarding pass kind of incredulously and said, “You do realize . . . . “ I cut him off and told him we weren’t crazy despite the available evidence and he let us through.

Let me tell you that spending 7.5 hours at an airport gate with only the equivalent of a Starbucks store open is something we should consider punishing criminals with. We got teary eyed watching as four flights before ours departed, but our moment of glory finally arrived and (surprise!) we were the first ones on the plane – kind of like hostages who have been released from captivity and are being flown out of a hostile country. OK, I’m exaggerating – we actually only spent about 7 hours and fifteen minutes in the airport.

Arriving at the Athens airport an hour later at 10:00 pm, we discovered we couldn’t stay in the secure area of the airport, but instead had to exit and go back through security again to get to our next flight. Fortunately, Greek airport security has someone directing it who has common sense. We were allowed to keep on our belts, shoes and each of our respective pairs of underwear, though everything else was stripped from our bodies, shredded, and then reassembled on the other side into something resembling the clothes we came in with. OK, that’s an exaggeration too – the clothes looked nothing like what we came in with. Similar to the Chania airport, our time in the Athens airport was extensive – our flight wasn’t due to depart until 7:00 a.m. the following morning. We had considered going to a hotel, but there is only one hotel within a light year of the airport and it was ridiculously expensive, so we decided to spend the night at the gate to our flight. I note that decision was made prior to the Chania airport experience and in hindsight, WHAT IN THE HELL WERE WE THINKING? But I digress.

The Athens airport is actually quite nice and we had spent a night in it on a previous trip and they had very comfortable lounge chairs you could actually sleep in. It was on that previous experience (true story) where we were awakened at 3:00 a.m by a loudly complaining American Karen shouting at a custodian who was doing her job cleaning the area where we were sleeping. I note that had Karen not made the fuss she did, we would have had a nice night snoozing in a comfortable location. Instead, as best as I could tell, Karen had issues with the fact that the custodian’s job description included cleaning and that said cleaning was, for some unknown reason, apparently disturbing Karen as much as she was disturbing the rest of us in that section of the airport. Karen’s upset meant (of course!) that she had to “take it to another level,” which involved calling the bewildered custodian’s supervisor on the phone in the middle of the night and demanding that the custodian be fired right then and there. No, I am still not making this up.

The manager, sensing that unless this conflict was quickly contained, WW III might break out in the Athens airport, raced to the scene of the crime with a security team in tow. Showing an incredible lack of restraint in not punching Godzilla in the face, the manager listened to Karen’s struggles about someone doing their job and then he announced that 1) cleaning was the custodian’s job, 2) the airport gate the custodian was cleaning was actually dirty, 3) the airport gate was not, in fact, a hotel room where the cleaning crew came through at about 11:00 a.m and 4) since this was not a hotel room, there was not a reasonable expectation of . . . But I digress again.

Meanwhile, back at this stay in the Athens airport, we found ourselves in a different section from the previous trip, and it was sadly lacking in lounge chairs. Fortunately, it was happily lacking in Karens, so I was able to snooze at least intermittently, but Indira weathered through the whole night, wide awake.

By 5:00 a.m, it was time to start getting ready for the next phase of our adventure and we approached it like the warriors that we had become. This was good and important because the next step was not one rooted in logic known to any human beings. I say this because it involved flying from Athens to London, a four hour flight. Now for anyone not well versed in geography, I will point out that Chennai, India, where we were headed, is located about 6 hours flight time southeast of Athens, as the crow flies, whereas London is located 4 hours northwest of Athens, as the crow flies, so our total flight time from Athens to Chennai meant 14 hours of flight time, as the very tired crow flies, instead of 6. It also meant an exciting trip to one of my least favorite airports in the world, Heathrow. No, I will not bore you with another account of a previous disastrous trip through that airport. Rather, in a minute, I will relate the best thing that happened to us on the trip, short of actually arriving at our final destination.

Heathrow on our arrival was slightly more packed than Grand Central Station at rush hour and we were slowly navigating our way through the congealed mass of humanity doing the same thing – looking, no racing, to find a place to sit down. It’s like playing musical chairs, but instead of having 4 chairs and 5 people, there are 4 chairs and 13,000 people. As I made a bee line towards not one, but TWO open and adjacent chairs, I saw this woman with two kids racing towards Indira at about the same rate. Sensing danger, and knowing I would forfeit any chance at the chairs by hesitating, I moved back towards Indira to provide ground support. Turns out my demonstration of true love was unnecessary – the woman was a former student of ours who wanted to say hi.

Let me tell you that if we felt bad from traveling at this point (which we most assuredly did), talking to this woman made all of that melt away. We heard about how important to her our teaching had been and how, thanks to us, she was successful in her career, was happy, and living a great life. We got a glow that stayed with us the entire remainder of our trip. The only negative thing we encountered was that, uh, well, we didn’t actually remember her name. Yes, she was vaguely familiar, but it had been about 12 years since she was in our class and our brains are getting old and yada, yada, yada. Digression complete.

Everything else on the trip was minor by comparison and (hopefully) funny. We had 4 hours in Heathrow so we made it to our gate in plenty of time and sat and watched as the flight before ours began boarding and then continued boarding and then “last minute” boarding and then “hurry or we’re going to close the doors” boarding and then “no wait, don’t actually run, we’ll keep the doors open for you if you get here quickly” boarding” and then for some reason we returned to “last minute” boarding for about 20 last minutes and then three or four “you’re the last one to make it on this flight” boarding.

By this time, it seemed we should getting ready to be boarding our own plane, so Indira went and double checked we were at the right gate and (you guessed it), they had moved the gate, so we grabbed our bags and raced to the updated gate. Now the word “gate” here may require a bit of clarification. Usually, the word “gate” at an airport is used in conjunction with “place where you exit the airport building to board a plane”. This particular “gate” had no apparent exit. Yes, it was labeled quite clearly “Gate 36”, but there was no exit and, more importantly, there was no stand where the attendants would check your boarding pass to let you out the “gate.” Further, there were no attendants. Instead, there was a sign saying “Gate 36. Please have a seat.”

While this was a bit puzzling, we did as we were told. The fact that we were able to actually find a seat should have been a big red flag, but there were other people sitting there and we were young and innocent way back then. As boarding time approached, we got a bit anxious, seeing no one from the airline appearing to tell us what was happening or where we might get herded to next, so I ventured about 50 yards (45.72 meters – it was Europe, after all) down the way and saw another sign that said Gate 36 and (importantly) it did have an exit door. Sensing I was onto something, I asked an official-looking person if this was the place for people headed to Chennai. I was told, yes, this was the place. I hurried back to Indira and, for the second time in the span of half an hour, we grabbed our bags and raced to a new “gate,” this time with the same number as the old “gate,” hopeful we had hit gold. We were in boarding group 7, which actually means you’re about the 14th group who gets permission to board the plane you laid down money for because the first groups are too important to have numbers – Gold/Platinum/Titanium members, Gold/Platinum Members, Gold/Titanium Members, Platinum/Titanium Members, Cousins of the CEO, etc. As each of these groups began lining up, a line started growing at the gate entrance where boarding passes are checked.

We finally entered “Riff/Raff “passenger boarding – those who have an actual boarding group number and it proceeded from Group 1 to 2 to 3. Meanwhile the boarding pass line queue continued to grow and didn’t shrink, meaning the bowels of the orifice were plugged, but there was a ray of light, and I’m not talking about an endoscope here – the sign above the entrance to where boarding starts announced “All Passengers May Now Board.” Feeling we were reasonably qualified for this group, we marched to the entrance, proudly displayed our boarding pass and were informed we were not, in fact, qualified. “We’re not ready for you yet.” “But, but the sign . . .” My voice tailed off, knowing full well I would neither win the argument nor understand airline logic.

Next came Group 4, Group 5, Group 5.31, Group Logic, Group Therapy, Groupies . . . Finally, after it seemed the entire island of Borneo had boarded ahead of us, we heard the magic words, “Group 7.” As we approached the man who had told us they weren’t ready for our group, I reflexively clenched my fist, but mercifully (for him) he allowed us to join the queue, which had boarded approximately three passengers since our last attempt.

Boarding was uneventful, meaning there were actual seats for us on the plane. Flight attendants were pleasant and we were told to pay close attention to the safety presentation because “this plane is different with some unusual features.” We were wise to this ploy though, having heard it on the last two flights. Apparently the airline execs had all attended the same seminar and walked away with the same message. I think it must have been presented by the same people who make those recorded telephone messages announcing “be sure to listen carefully as our prompts have recently changed.” In their defense, though, the plane WAS a Boeing, so we hoped the unusual features of this plane included a few tightened bolts around the exit “plug.” Digression complete (again).

The flight to Chennai was somewhat bumpy and completely LONG. I have to say, though, in hindsight, it didn’t seem like 10 hours – more like 10 days. Fortunately, and shortly before my legs began to petrify, we landed about 40 miles (64.3738 kilometers) away from Chennai and taxied the remaining distance at a speed of almost 8 miles (12.8748 kilometers) per hour (hour). Awaiting us at the airport with broad smiles were Indira’s brother, Sriram and his wife, Lakshmi and all of our discomforts, frustrations, and lack of sleep disappeared. We’re having a great time with them and Indira’s father and the trip was well worth it, but I do worry about those people in the Twilight Zone of the exit-less Gate 36.