I've done more than my fair share of world travelling by now,both with work and for play, but never before had I had quite such a unremitting collection of delays before. Finally today after 4 days of travelling we have arrived in Manali in Northern India. For it while it did seem like someone was trying really hard to keep us away from the place. Plan was to get the Scotland book out, have a couple of weeks getting it to the shops and then jet off for a much needed holiday ( busman's holiday) in Ladakh. Things dont always go according to plan though.
The Book was having a very painful birth with delay after delay in the printing, and then just as I was about to leave the office on friday morning to fly to India, our agent at the printers phoned up to say that they had made a mistake in printing the cover - he didnt go into details, but I had this image of it being upside down or something - and that we would have to reprint it, meaning another few days delay. So here I am arriving in India at around the same time as the book arrives in the office, and poor Ali having to sort our 5000 books all on his own. Then when i finally did leave the office to drive to Heathrow, I distractedly filled up the tank of my diesel car with PETROL., and standing on the forecourt with a petrol nozzle in my hand, a plane to catch and a queue of cars behind me, I knew this was not good. I almost wept. 7 hours later and tank drained and cleaned, I was on the M6. Surely everything would go smoothly now, but there was a niggling doubt in the back of my mind, after all 'bad things come in threes'. We were flying from Heathrow on the 5.10pm to Delhi on Saturday with British Airways. 'Great' i thought when Jim booked us onto a BA flight, 'its nice to fly on one of the more mature, professional carriers now and again'.
When we arrived at the airport there were queues OUTSIDE the airport and all along the pavements. I assumed this was all due to the security threats they had had recently and didnt worry about it too much, until the anouncement came on the tanoy that all BA flights had been suspended due a luggage belt failure. 5 hours of queueing later and they finally announced that ALL FLIGHTS THAT DAY WERE CANCELLED. Thousands of people were totally stuck at airport. Being good Brits and all that we patiently transferred to the queue to rebook our flight for the morning. 2 hours later and about 20 people from the front, along came a man who said, sorry the bookings desk is closing. 2 mins later he came back and said,'no its OK its going to stay open'. Then 2 minutes later, back again, and you've guessed it, the desk was closing. Now 10pm at night we realised we were going to have to admit defeat and go away. Luckily we managed to get a doss for the night at Jim's folks who live just outside London. A bit suprised to see us at 11pm, they nether the less fed and watered us and gave us a bed for a few hours. Next morning, dragging ourselves out of bed at 4am ready to do battle with BA and get ourselves on a flight to India, we headed back to the airport. We were stunned when we managed to book straight on to the next flight at 10am that morning. Elated, we thought that all our delays were finally over. At 8am we dutifully went through checkout and headed for a bit of retail therapy in the departure lounge. 10 minutes later and there was suddenly a loud continuous ringing sound, not unlike a fire alarm. Yup, now that we had finally got into the building, there was a fire and people were being moved out. There must have been a God out there somewhere, one who thought we might have had enough by now, and we were allowed back in just in time to board our flight.
FANTASTIC. We were just sitting comfortably when the captain announced that there would be a slight delay, whilst they moved some luggage around in the hold to realign the trim of the aircraft. 'Never heard that one before'. An hour later, still sat on the runway at Heathrow, and the announcement came, they had aligned the trim, and whilst doing this had found ' a small fuel leak in the aircraft'. 'Nothing to be alarmed about'. As a series of fire-engines drew up and lined them selves up outside the plane, i was alarmed. Maybe there was a reason why I had put petrol in my deisel car, maybe there was a reason why the plane didnt take off yesterday, it was all a terrible warning, my paranoia was shouting. 4 hours later, and the captain calmly announced that the leak had been fixed, the fire engines drove away, it was safe to use a mobile phone away and we would be leaving shortly. There was a loud sign of relief from a lot of very anxious people on the plane as we finally left the ground and headed for Delhi. Once in the air the flight was straightforward. Arriving at Delhi, we collected our baggage and bikes and started looking for Cara from OUT THERE BIKING who were arranging our trip for us. Now it hadnt been easy to keep in touch with them, whilst all of the last 2 days carnage had been going on, and we had had to keep making arrangements and then keep changing them as things had gone on. By now it was 4am Indian time and we had been travelling for 2 days and were much in need of bed and a shower. 'Where were they'.
You've guessed it, where they were was not in the airport. We learnt later that Cara had had to go on with another client to Manali, where our trip started from, and she had arranged for a local taxi driver to meet us at the airport and take us the hotel. At the time we didnt know all this. We also didnt know the address of the hotel, or any hotel come to that, or Cara's contact number in Manali. We were kinda stuck. The only thing to do was go to sleep and worry about it in the morning. I'd been dozing for about half an hour when a woman near us pointed out that a man outside had been knocking on the window and pointing excitely at our bikes. Eventually she thought she had better come and tell us about it. Hoorah! our taxi had arrived. We drove throught noisy dusty streets, still busy at 5am, to our hotel and threw ourselves straight in to bed. Everything was OK now wasnt it. A postponed book, petrol in the diesel tank, a cancelled flight, a fuel leak on the plane, and abandoned in Delhi at 4am. I'm hoping that that's our full quota of delays now for the trip...... Sue & Jim Savege from the Sunshine Guest House and the Manali Cybercafe
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