Day 1: The shortest day of my life.

Note: This post was written in-flight and was published later.

Today is one of the shortest days of my short life.  I got up at 4:15a this morning to catch the 5am shuttle back to the airport.  At the airport, security was much busier than RDU, but moved quickly.  Luckily, my boarding pass from yesterday was still valid and I did not have to check in again.  Our gate was not marked as being to Delhi, but I knew it must be, as I recognized many passengers from yesterday.  I grabbed some Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast, and waiting for boarding.  Around boarding time, the gate agent came on the intercom and told us that the nightmare was not quite over–maintenance was still checking the plane and we could not board.  Fortunately they found no problems and we were able to board and soon take off.  This plane is much bigger than the last, holding hundreds of people.  However, my sister will be much dismayed to learn that there is only one floor, and no spiral staircase going up to first class.

This is my real plane out of Chicago.

About an hour into the flight, they served something that was apparently supposed to be breakfast.  I have no idea what it was, but it was not very good.  I thought perhaps I was being insensitive to their culture, so I continued eating cautioned bits.  I felt a surge of satisfaction when the Indian fellow beside me took a few bites and gave up on the meal as well–I guess the food really wasn’t that good.  The breakfast also came with some fruit and yogurt, which I am pleased to say tasted just like American fruit!  As I write this portion of my post, I am 33,000 feet over Canada, east of the Hudson Bay with eleven hours left in the flight.  It is 10pm in New Delhi, which means in two hours this day will be over, after only about 13 hours, truly making this one of the shortest Monday’s one could hope for!

Today is also one of the longest days of my long life.  Although it is now technically Tuesdays and Day 2, I am still on the plane, so I will include this with Day 1.  There comes a time in long flights like the one I’m on, mine is 14 hours, when you feel like you have been on the plane forever and it is about time for the flight to end.  That is when you are about half way through the flight.  I began to feel like the flight needed to be over, so I checked the ETA, and lo and behold, there were only seven hours left!  As I am writing this, there are three and a half hours remaining, we are close to the Russian-Kazakhstan border, and we just crossed under 2000 miles remaining to reach Delhi.

A little while before we land, they will have us fill out landing cards for Indian customs and serve us dinner, right before we land at 9am, the perfect time for dinner, don’t you think?  Since I wrote this whole post on the plane, I will include the landing, customs, and whatever I do in Delhi in my next.

I would just like to add that while dinner was not that great, it was edible.  Turns out, it is pretty hard to screw up rice!