Travel Diary

Well, I'm back safely, and though I didn't have Internet access much while I was there, I took a journal, and thought I'd post them here:

Friday 1/5 11:15am – Off to the airport (DFW). We arrive with plenty of time (you never know when you fly international), but had no problems getting our tickets and through security. In fact, we were standing in front of our gate at 11:30, even though our flight wasn’t to leave until 1:45. We had barbecue, and did some strategizing/talking about our expectations for the trip. 1:45 came and went. The flight was delayed. 2:30, they said we could leave. 2:30 came and they said, “3:00pm” Because of bad weather in New Jersey (where we would connect with a flight to Delhi), air traffic control wouldn’t even clear us to leave Dallas until 5:00pm. By that time, we would not be able to make our connecting flight. So we went home, and figured we’d try again the next day (this time catching an earlier flight out of Dallas). After quite a while with Lisa (manager for Continental), we tried every other possibility, but very few flights go direct to Delhi, so we’d have to settle for the same flight from Newark, NJ to Delhi the next day.

Saturday 1/6 5:30am – Off to the airport (DFW)… again. This time, we got off without a hitch. We enjoyed our emergency aisle seats (thank you, LISA!)… and it was almost worth it; especially considering that our 14-hour flight from Newark to Delhi would also be in the emergency aisle. So I enjoyed the comfortable seat… awake. I did all of the math, and figured that I had to adjust my schedule so that I could be on “India-time” by the time I arrived. I planned ahead and only slept one hour Friday night. So I stayed up for the entire flight (24 hours with only one hour of sleep). Then I crashed at the airport (thank you, Ambien). I got 3 hours in Newark, and then we boarded our flight at 8:50pm (US-time) and I slept the first 6 hours.