Hop, Skip, and a Jump

I did it! I made it to India. After nearly 29 hours of travel, I made it half way around the world. Life will definitely be different for the next 7 weeks, but I am so ready for the challenge.

The first leg of my journey was from Phoenix to London. Despite our plane leaving 20 minutes later than originally scheduled for, we had made such great time that the total flight was only 9 hours. Once we landed in Heathrow, I will be honest–I was very tempted to “accidentally” miss my layover and just stay in London. Of course the airport had all of the Prince Harry and Meghan Merkle merchandise out, so it was so very tempting to purchase something, but alas I did not. I repeated “I will be back in a few months” like it was my living mantra.

The second leg was from London to Bangalore (Bengaluru). The flight itself was slightly more turbulent, but not by much. Overall, the flights were pretty smooth. I slept way more on this leg than the first. I normally am not a big plane-sleeper, but I passed out on this leg of the trip. I also wasn’t feeling my best, so I didn’t eat any of the meals they served (except for a mini ice cream bar about 5 hours into the flight. Who can resist ice cream?!). We landed in Bangalore at 4:45am local time, which was probably a really fortunate thing. Because it was so early in the morning, the airport seemed a lot less crowded, which definitely helped with my nerves.

Once we landed in Bangalore, I separated from two of my coworkers. They were staying in Bangalore, but I had a final leg to Chennai. This part was…confusing. We landed, went through customs (which was surprisingly quick!), went through security, got our bags, and then I had to go back through the “Transfers” part of the airport. This was challenging, because I was a transfer but kind of not. It wasn’t a direct transfer from another flight, but this was the only way for me to get to the part of the airport I needed to be in. It didn’t help that for some reason my flight number wasn’t showing up on the board.

I explained the situation to the person checking for tickets (obviously I didn’t have mine yet, because I still needed to check in), and then to the people checking my luggage. I had to pay for an overage (apparently international luggage weight can be 23kg per bag, but for domestic it’s 23kg total), then go back in line to finish checking my luggage. I finally got my plane ticket, and then went through security again. This part was interesting, because they had women and men separated, and for the women we had to go into this closed-off booth and be scanned down.

When I finally went through all of that, I found my gate and waited. It’s funny because I was so incredibly nervous that I wouldn’t have enough time to do all of that in a little less than 4 hour layover. I had read horror stories of customs in India taking 3 or more hours, and then with the hassle of checking in, I thought for sure I was going to have to run to my gate. I didn’t. I was the first one there. Go figure.

Boarded the flight from Bangalore to Chennai. Thankfully, the flight wasn’t even half way full, so we all could spread out on this tiny plane. They served us lunch (which I thought was weird for a flight that was at most an hour and a half), and I finally decided to eat something. We then landed, and I finally made it to Chennai!

The hotel had prearranged someone to pick me up, so I met him outside of the airport. The drive was maybe 20-30 minutes between the airport and the hotel. And let me tell you, even though it was only 20-30 minutes, I absolutely loved what I saw.

Chennai reminds me a lot of Rome. It’s chaotic, dirty, backwards, there’s no such thing as traffic laws, and somehow it just all manages to flow. I think my experience in Rome and Florence will help me navigate around Chennai and Bangalore. Thanks, Cottey!

So now begins my 6 weeks in Chennai. Apparently, we will be having two 3-day weekends, so I know a few people are planning on trying to take a trip out of the country. We only have double-entry visas, so we can only go out of the country one more time. I definitely want to utilize one of those weekends to go to the Taj Mahal.