Delhi Delays

Leaving Istanbul was delightfully uneventful. But the Delhi airport was purgatory. Those in transit to another country were made to sit in a room while officials went back and forth between us and our baggage, identifying it for about two hours. This particular practice is based in a byzantine visa rule: No one is allowed into India, even into parts of the airport, without the expensive and torturous process of obtaining an Indian visa. To do that, weeks before departure you send your passport, lots of money, and your firstborn child to the bowels of your nearest consulate and hope they will all return, except the money, before departure. But I had a visa already, which raised suspicion about why India wasn’t my final destination. 

We could not leave the room without a boarding pass, which we could not get until the luggage was processed, which couldn’t happen until everyone else’s was, which couldn’t happen without elaborate descriptions followed by Iphone photos to verify. I was grouped with an Israeli couple whose tag had gone missing. When the bureaucrat bogged down in questions, the woman complained to me sotto voce in Hebrew so he couldn’t understand, and then not so sotto voce, and then not in Hebrew, and then not to me but to the bureaucrats behind the counter. When they couldn’t take it anymore, they sent the Israelis ahead, but kept me. 

By then I had been regretfully informed that my plane was canceled, and the next one was several hours later. Since I would miss my connecting flight to Pokhara, I asked about flying another airline. After four hours of wrangling I ended up buying a new ticket on “Spice Jet.” There is a great deal of mystery to the system, which has its own rhythm. If you sit and wait like they tell you, nothing happens, and if you hover too much they angrily insist that you sit. But if you keep going back with more suggestions and requests they slowly find their way through the morass. Layers of paperwork were a British import I think, but working the system without clear purpose is a special Delhi touch. 

My luggage was found. Air India promised to send my suitcase to Spice Jet. It took till boarding time for me to get from the detention room through security and to the gate, and there I learned the suitcase could not be located. Spice Jet claimed they could not talk to Air India, and suggested I fly to Kathmandu and talk to them there. I waited in the gate till they insisted that the captain was shutting the door and I had to run. But after I got on the plane the door stayed open another half hour and the plane didn’t leave for another hour. 

Upon arrival I filled out a form with a guy who kept calling the airline Spice Stuff. The Spice bureaucrat said I had to go to the departure room ticket counter to talk to Air India. This meant fleeing the helpful porters, cutting through the line outside, explaining myself to the police, sending my hand luggage through the Xray machine, getting frisked, walking around asking people until the proper authority appeared, and being told that they would do what they could but they weren’t responsible if it was lost. And that if it were found I would have to come back to Kathmandu, a day’s journey by car, and claim it. 

I then ushered my hand luggage upstream through the hoards, being stopped by all the same policemen, and threatening the woman who tried to frisk me again. Then I walked a couple blocks and up a dirt hill to the domestic departure building, joined the wrong line, got sent back to the end of the right line, Xrayed my luggage again, went through the ticket counter line, got sent to pay a tax, went back to the ticket counter to get my boarding pass, got frisked again, and went to waiting room for gates 1 and 2. (There are no gates 3 or 4, and for that matter I am not sure why there is a 2.) Flew out on propeller plane to Pokhara, where Claire was waiting for me. Many phone calls and emails later, my bag was located, and the next day the second person who tried, one of Sajal’s colleagues, was allowed to pick it up and bring it to me tomorrow when he arrives.

Solar water heater on roof

I enjoyed a warm solar-heated shower, and then we ate dal bhat takhari (lentils and rice with vegetables). In the sunshine it’s 60 degrees in the daytime, and 30s at night. The house has space heaters that work when the electricity is on (loadshedding schedule keeps it off about ten hours a day now—sometimes it can be fourteen). But with heavy blankets and a wool cap, I slept very comfortably for almost twelve hours.