Cosmically, it's possible that the universe has been sending me a few signs over the last couple months that India might be slightly stress-inducing for Heather. I spent a week in early December not-so-quietly freaking out when I had to send my passport away to the Consulate General of India to get a visa. Saying good-bye to your passport 3 weeks before you're leaving the country isn't a warm-fuzzy feeling. I believe I may have kissed it when it was returned to me. Booking my flight from Bangkok to Mumbai was obnoxious as well - I couldn't book from home on the internet because I didn't have a Thai address to mail the ticket to (idiotic rationale that I won't bore you with) and then when I did buy the ticket from a travel agent in Bangkok in early January I couldn't actually get the paper ticket before I flew out to Cambodia later that day, so the ticket had to sit in Bangkok for 3 weeks before I could pick it up. I have a habit of envisioning the worst possible outcomes, so I stressed for 3 hours straight about whether it would actually be there when I returned. An excellent lesson in learning to just relax and trust the universe though, because the ticket was waiting for me just where it should be when I went to pick it up 2 days before I flew to India.
But all that was easy-peesy compared to my actual arrival in the country. Our plan seemed reasonable. I was scheduled to arrive in Mumbai at 10:30 in the evening. My friend Farah's flight from Toronto was due in at 1 am. Rather than making my way into the city on my own late at night, we decided that I would wait at the arrivals lounge and meet Farah's flight. I was armed with Farah's Mom's cell number and the name of the place we were staying, in case of complications. And this all would have worked out fine, if it weren't for one tiny detail that we managed to cock up. Farah's flight arrived as scheduled on Feb 8th at 1am. My flight also arrived as scheduled on Feb 8th at 10:30pm. I think sometimes life is hard just to teach me a lesson. So lesson #1 - pay attention to details, space cadet, because booking your flight to arrive on the wrong day, especially when arriving in a country like India, is not good times. Tragically if there is a Hindu god of communication, he was not pulling any strings for us, because through a comedy of errors, all attempts at contacting eachother failed, and the stress level escalated to disturbing proportions.
I'll attempt a quick run-down of the next 24 hours:
1:00am-3:00am, Mumbai time, Feb 8th: Farah arrives as scheduled. Expecting me to be hanging about, she spends the next hour waiting for her luggage, then scouring every toilet stall at Gate 2A, looking for me. After 2 hours, Farah and her cousin Zarik, who had come to pick us up, head to the Cricket Club of India, where we were staying, in hopes that I'd made my own way there. Meanwhile, I'm tucked up in my bed in Bangkok, ignorant of the stress I am causing.
4:00-6:00am, Mumbai time, Feb 8th: Farah and her family are concerned that my body may be floating in the Bay of Bengal, and contact friends in Toronto to see whether anyone has heard from me. Armed with a calculator and the latest email she's had from me, my friend Merjane and a few other Harlequinites deduce that based on my ramblings in the email and the time difference, I'm probably not arriving till the evening of the Feb 8th. The Mullicks attempt to sleep without a great deal of success.
9:00am Bangkok time (7:30am in Mumbai), Feb 8th: Heather logs off the computer in an internet cafe, never to check her email again for the rest of the day. (Another collosal mistake).
10:00 Mumbai time, Feb 8th: Farah emails me asking me where the hell I am, but I'm on a tour of a silk magnate's teak mansion in Bangkok, buying silk.
Random moment in the afternoon, Feb 8th: Farah and her parents decide that if I haven't arrived by the morning of Feb 9th they will contact my mother and the Canadian High Commission. (Thank God Nancy didn't get that call, can you imagine?)
10:30 pm Mumbai time, Feb 8th: I arrive at Gate 2C in the Mumbai airport, and proceed to kill the next 2 hours propped up against a cement wall, trying to avoid the illegal taxi drivers. Ignorantly I had assumed I'd be able to park my backside somewhere, but no such luck, so I stand out on the sidewalk, and try and keep busy looking like I know what I'm doing. I chat with an Australian Indian girl for 45 minutes as she waits for her ride. As she leaves she offers to call Farah's parents for me, but I decline, assuming I've still got an hour or so before they'll be picking us up. I have this well-engrained but really stupid habit of not wanting to impose on people that I really need to kick. Because calling Farah's Mom at this point in the evening would have made the next few hours immensely different. So lesson #2 - accept help from safe strangers when it is offered, idiot.
12:30-1:30am, Feb 9th: I realize that I should have written down the specifics of Farah's flight - knowing it will arrive roughly a couple hours after my flight no longer feels like enough information.
1:15-1:30am, Feb 9th: Given there are no arrivals boards at the gate, I attempt to chat with the security guards to find out whether the flight has landed. The first two attempts prove unsuccessful, and both sides give up in frustration. On attempt #3 I am informed that I'm at the wrong gate for British Airway flights. I curse loudly and run 5 minutes with my luggage to gate 2A.
1:30-2:45am, Feb 9th: This gate is much less dodgy than the other gate. I'm stressed to learn from the arrival board that the flight landed a half hour earlier, and instantly start to worry that I've missed Farah. I try and call Farah's Mom's cell number, but realize that my mobile phone is dead. Lesson #3, don't leave your phone uncharged for 5 weeks and then magically expect it to work, cause it just ain't going to. I start scanning the crowd for a couple that looks like they could have reproduced Farah, as she's emailed me a few days earlier saying that her parent's would be picking us up at the airport. No such luck. It is 2:45 - I am exhausted and no longer thinking rationally. I stumble out to the payphone, but realize I have no change. (Random rambling from Heather: I hate international pay phones. Yes, they do provide directions but its like some part of my brain shuts down and I get stumped at step #2. And don't get me started on the frustrations associated with differing standards of digits from country to country. It's enough to make me commit violence. But I digress.) I next stumble over to the prepaid taxi counter and order a car. I am alarmed at the fact that the attendant seems skeptical when I announce I'm heading to the Cricket Club at 2am, but just sort of go with it anyway.
3:00am-3:45am: I ride through the deserted streets of Mumbai, in the backseat of a cab that is constructed primarily of rust. It suddenly occurs to me that arriving at a Cricket Club at 3am with no one expecting me isn't going to be a smooth check-in. Its not like there will be a hotel reception desk at a private club. As we drive through Mumbai I realize that the taxi driver and I are not quite as alone as I'd thought. There are people sleeping on the streets, with a few men huddled around open fires in the gutters. I begin to envision my own death. The driver will find the CCI closed, drop me on a random street corner, the fire men will not be welcoming, and then the details get hazy but I'm convinced I'm going to die. I almost vommit, but manage to hold it together. (And the stupid thing is the taxi driver seemed quite nice, I was just totally freaking out at this point.) I beg the taxi driver to try calling Farah's Mom. He dials incorrectly and we establish that the man on the other end of the line is not looking for a random Canadian lady. We arrive at the CCI to find it locked up nice and tight. Having passed a Hotel Intercontinental 2 minutes earlier, I ask my driver to take me back to the hotel. Instead we settle on another expensive hotel, right on the corner. I wander into the lobby of the Marin Plaza hotel looking dazed and desperate. I then meet the nicest hotel receptionists I've ever come across. The fact that it was almost 4am and I was clearly a tourist on the verge of collapse may have affected how they treated me. But they were lovely. While prepared to pay handsomely for my life, I think my eyes bugged out of my head when he converted the price for me. So we negotiate a bit and they drop the price from $450 US to $295 US. I agree and we start the paperwork when it occurs to me that perhaps we should try calling the Mullick's again. Attempt #1 remains unanswered (at this very moment Mrs. Mullick has been awoken and can't locate her mobile in the dark before I hang up.) But 2 seconds later the hotel's desk phone rings and it is a voice I am incredibly happy to hear - Mr. Mullick is coming to rescue me, and I'm going to live. Ten minutes later I am in my room in the CCI, hugging Farah, and collapsing on my bed.
11:am Feb 9th - 2am Feb 10th: To say things improved immensely is an understatement. We breakfasted with Farah's Mom poolside at the club. We meet a friend from Toronto, Andrew, and are chaffeured around the city by his driver. We meet Farah's cousin at a music store and I buy a Bollywood movie soundtrack. (I now have a minor crush on India's #1 movie star.) We go to an open-air jazz concert in the suburbs with Andrew, then meet Zarik and his friends for dinner at a club. We drive for 45 minutes to get to the only club still open, and stand in line waiting to get in, but give up, as apparently minor Bollywood starlets are inside sipping martinis. What a difference 24 hours can make!
Anyway, I've now become super-anal retentive about confirming all details related to travel in India, and am just sort of crossing my fingers. But if some of you at home want to cross some for me as well, that would be fantastic. Clearly I need all the help I can get!
No comments:
Post a Comment