Monotony

Travel, travel, travel.  Huge amounts of boredom interrupted by very, very small bits of interesting stuff and culminated by a good meal, odd rooms, and stuffy noses.

We were able to meet Joel at DIA.  His college buddies drove him all through the night to meet with use at 4:00am to do the security and check in dance for the first leg of our flight, Denver to Chicago.  Joel has a neat story and I’ll get to it on another day.

The flight to Chicago was smooth and faultless.  At Chicago we first spent a good portion of our nearly six hour layover getting to know one another, talking about the mission schedule, and doing an I Am Second study.  With less than about 40 minutes to spare, Tara’s plane landed from California and she joined the team.  Tara is a 20 year old who is doing more travel and mission work before her 21^st birthday than most of us will do in a lifetime.  More on her later.

Th in-flight update screen.  Depressing.

Monotony.  There is not other word to describe a nearly 15 hour flight across the frozen waste of the northern hemisphere.  There is an old saying that it’s the journey, not the destination, that makes the trip memorable.  In many cases that is true.  In the case of spending more than half a day cramped in a droning tube of smell and bad food several thousand feet above the earth……The destination will certainly win out.

After what seemed like an eternity, our plane landed in Delhi.  It’s a thoroughly modern airport, something that probably shouldn’t have disappointed me but oddly enough did.

The good part was that after we picked up bags from the carousel and checked ourselves through customs, Charles Golla was waiting for us with cabs.  Charles is our main person in India.  He is the sort of man that the second he smiles at you and offers you his hand, you know you are going to like him.  You can tell that he has a heart as big as the continent he calls home. 

After our first exposure to the madness that is called “traffic” in India, we arrive at our hotel for the night.  Charles checked us in, two to a room and we all went upstairs to drop off our bags and agreed to meet in the lobby in 15 minutes to exchange currency and go to dinner.  Larry and I got teamed up together, which is just fine by me.  We’ve traveled together before and get on well.  But……….we don’t get on so well that we feel comfortable sharing what seemed to be a wide twin size bed.  That bed, along with walls a lovely shade of lilac and one of the most unique bathrooms I have ever encountered, are what we found in our room.

The single bed in the room too small.

We figured we’d sort it out later.  Right now it’s time to get down to the lobby and switch currency.  We’re switching not only an average of $200.00 in personal funds for each team member, but also enough to cover the entire teams hotels, vehicles, meals, etc.  In all, several thousands of U.S. Dollars are exchanged for several tens of thousands of rupees.  The rate is 48 rupees to the dollar and I feel like a prince when I get a sizeable stack of 500 rupee bills in exchange for my short stack of four $50.00 bills.  The whole transaction takes place in the lobby of the hotel and for some reason I keep thinking that one of the Soprano’s is going to come around the corner at any moment.  It’s all up-front and above-board, of course, but there is something odd about counting out all that currency anywhere other than a bank.

A buffet dinner was set up in the hotel restaurant for us.  I’m in tall cotton.  Good curries, great breads.  Peasant food at it’s absolute best.  This may be the first time in my life that I’ve had a completely meatless meal and been very satisfied.  I think that it is possible that Matt and Carly will drop several pounds.  Spicy foods are not Matt’s favorite and the lack of his own product (beef) is a disappointment to him.  Perhaps we’ll get him trained before the trip is out.

We mentioned the shared beds and our gracious host, Charles, spoke to the hotel management.  They hadn’t really considered two 200 pound Americans in a room about the size of a large American bathroom.  But all was made well in the end and most of us were moved to rooms with two beds in them. 

There is one small spot in the lobby where the internet connection actually works with one tiny bar of signal strength.  Needless to say, that is not where I am updating the blog.  I was able to check my email and give my wife a little comfort by letting her know I had made is safely to Dehli.  I also let her know how to make popcorn and encouraged her to take Eric up on his offer to help around the house, particularly with shoveling the estimated ten inches of snow that was due to come at any time.  Eric, you can thank me later.

Tomorrow……more travel.  This time to our final destination, Tezpur.