Getaway Day: January 8, 2016

The Journey Begins

Day One

This is the element of foreign "adventure" that strikes fear into the hearts of most travelers: flight on a domestic airline. We have chosen to suffer on United, though, thanks to our thoughtful – and tireless - travel agent (Scout), we have primo exit row seats. True, there still isn’t enough room for an adult bottom, but there is a fair amount of leg room. And, let’s face it: if the plane goes down we’ll all be exiting through the fuselage in multiple pieces anyway.

Okay, a little morbid, but it IS United and one’s thoughts get a bit dark after the fiftieth time a Flight Attendant wrestles her hips through the twelve inch space United calls an "aisle," an action which repositions the aisle-seat passenger a foot or so into the center-seat passenger. Fortunately for the one us who always whines to get an aisle seat, the center seat passenger is Scout, who’s very good at adapting. Now, for example, she’s gotten the trifecta: a large arm rest hogger in the window seat to her left, a seat-kicker kid behind her, and a squalling baby one row away. Oh, and there’s a pretty good chance the seat-kicker will throw up before we reach New Jersey. Did I mention this was airline travel?

Okay, as these things go, San Diego to Newark has been about as good as it gets. We haven’t plummeted to the earth yet and, like any Third World travelers, we brought our own food to sustain us; in this instance it's day-old sandwiches. Hmm, wonder when that mayonnaise will go south and turn into projectile diarrhea. Better still, the one of us who’s a sore loser (no names, please) won two Scrabble games and has been able to stand much of the time to ease a defective hip. (Ah, my college days when I worked retail on concrete floors and swore: When I get out of here, I’m sitting the rest of my life! No more. Now the tune is: I HAVE TO sit? Aw, Jeez!)

The road ahead: For some reason – I suspect poor planning – India has been placed on the far side of the earth. Who knew! The flight from Newark is 14 hours in the air. Since we lose another 10 hours in time zones, we arrive in New Delhi a full day after we leave the USA. This is why a 16 day tour includes only 12 days on the ground. Our travel agent has set us up with a few extra days in Rishikesh, the place where The Beatles chilled with the Maharishi. We’re hoping they left stuff behind that we can sell on eBay. The basic tour includes a few days in Katmandu, site of a disastrous earthquake last spring. Gee, hope nothing happened that will inconvenience US. (Always a bummer when a disaster that killed a huge number of people interferes with our photo ops.)

Coincidental with the trip has been Dave’s reading of "Our Oriental Heritage," the first of a twelve volume series of histories of the world. This one was written in 1935 and contains a lot of the casual racism we know and love. Still – as a casual racist himself – Dave is not offended in the least. The volume is full of interesting stuff and has a lightly sardonic tone about the those who try to create a portrait of a culture from the scraps left by history. The insoluble problems are that histories are always written by biased people and that the source documents are always suspect. Are things we "know" from trusted sources actually true? Dunno. The Indian philosophical perspective might conclude that such considerations are irrelevant. The past happened. So what? We’re dealing with now and, it, like history, is ultimately unknowable. Que sera sera, as the philosopher Doris Day used to say.

Needless to say, we know nothing meaningful about Indian culture.

Later: Six hours in Newark until we depart for Delhi. We thought about taking a shuttle into the slums to score some crack, but the chances of meeting Chris Christie there made it not worth it.

The first high point was seeing a pigeon strutting around the waiting area as we scarfed our sandwiches. In case you haven’t been to Newark, the waiting area is indoors. Perhaps the pigeon was brought to replace costly minimum-wage cleaning personnel.

The second high point was knocking back a few glasses of wine while waiting, (the fact is, almost any activity is better with a few glasses of wine; walking a really long way, for example.)

We’ve moved our watches ahead to Newark time and, somehow, 7 PM (and dark) seems like…well 7 PM even though it’s 4 PM San Diego time. This is part of the Great Jet Lag Fake Out. It feels like I’m going to fall asleep as soon as I get on the plane, but it ain’t gonna happen. Instead, there’s a lot of head bobbing that only amounts to a few seconds of actual unconsciousness. We depart at 8:45 PM Newark time and arrive at 9:20 PM Delhi time, groggy and ready for one – and only one – international experience: sleep.

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