Getting to India ... a Trial of Patience!!!
Well, we went and did it!!!
After 3 days of complete utter frustration, I gave up trying to organize this trip with Princess online. In fact, I gave up on the whole idea, and we decided not to bother going! Then we began to think, could we still get the great online, last minute price, that we had been offered by Princess if we use a Travel Agent? Out of complete desperation, we called the local Cruise Ship Centers office, and then our luck began to change. The agent there was more than willing to "fight the fight" with Princess and give us the same low price that we had been originally offered. In fact, she even had a contact in Toronto whom she had used before who specialized in land trips in India. With a great sigh of relief, we left the minutia up to her!
To make a long story short, she managed to whip Princess into shape -- after many long phone calls mostly on hold, -- returning tickets made out to the wrong people -- a completely screwed up excursion package-- and then set us up with the land portion through her contact in Toronto. She even managed to route us out of SeaTac instead of Vancouver thus saving a pile of money. She truly saved the Trip for us!
Dealing with the airlines is another bit of nonsense!!!
One of the reasons we first started to look at this trip was to use up some of our Air miles that we had accumulated since the last air trip in 2002. Remember that every time we fill up Harvey, it is like the debt of a small country so we have accumulated a "lot" of Air miles. What better deal, we thought, free air and a cheap cruise .. all in the area we wished to visit. But, of course the RV Gods are directly related to the Gods of air travel, so the plan soon went awry. To fly common steerage to New Delhi would cost 200,000 points each. To put this into perspective, flying business Class, Vancouver to Sydney Australia, is only 120,000 points. When I asked why this silly price differences, I could almost hear the shrug as the fellow on the phone said he had no clue, but there it was ... tough if I didn't like it!
We were so deep into the trip at that point that there was no turning back so we ended up using Princess's air setup. They get tickets for a lot less than we could get them commercially, but it did remove one of the reasons we decided to go in the first place. Also, Princess routes their passengers on the cheapest Air Line with the most inconvenient departure/arrival times. You know ... the flights that no one else wants!!! But, more on that latter.
Wednesday the 23rd of August saw us heading south to a motel in the SeaTac area that offers secure car storage. The deal is that you get a free week secured storage with every night booked at the motel. That meant that with booking a room night before we leave and a night on our return, we would only have to pay for 2 weeks more. The room rates were cheap so we ended up with only having to pay less that $150.00 for two nights accommodation and a month's car storage. When compared to the almost $400.00 we were saving by leaving from SeaTac, this was a very good deal indeed!! On the phone, they said that the car storage was very secure with 24 hour CCTV in place. They, however, neglect to mention that no one monitored the TV during the wee hours of the morning, but what the hey ... we didn't find this out until our return. So, we were happy.
Our flight left was to leave at 11:45 AM on Thursday August 24th., and we were told to be at the airport by 9:00 given all the changes in the airport security setup. It turned out that the Motel we chose, was not exactly the Taj Mahal!!! The room was very basic ..more like the 1950's ...with a bed that was very very hard! The upshot was that we were at the airport by 8:00 and were the first inline to check our baggage and get our boarding passes. This time we beat the Travel Gods by being more than an hour early. That night, Chicago had huge thunder storms and O'Hare had been badly affected. All flights into and out of Chicago were delayed 3 hours. That would mean that our booked flight, delayed for 3 hours, would get us into Chicago one hour after our connecting flight to New Delhi had left. We would have lost one day of our touring in india. Fortunately, due to our extremely early arrival, and the fact that Alaska Air had a flight that was to leave at 8:45 and had been delayed to our original departure time of 11:45 -- and had seats open on it, American Airlines could switch our tickets onto Alaska Air, and we would arrive on time at Chicago. Take THAT you Travel Gods!!! We dodged that bullet!!!
But, our body clocks were ticking ... up at 6:30 waiting until 11:45 for the flight --- 5 1/4 hours....
The Alaska Air flight was uneventful ... in fact, it was deadly boring ... flying steerage, on a flight less than 4 hours -- we were on a flight of 3 hours and 55 minutes --, means that you get absolutely nothing to eat. The Stewardess did come around once and ask us if we wanted a glass of water after 3 hours, but that was IT! Remember, that under the new rules, you can not carry water after you go through the first level of security. Visions of the Sonora Desert flashed through our minds as our stomachs, not having received any nourishment since 7:30, began to let us know they were not happy. On arriving in Chicago we had only just over an hour to make the connecting flight, so we grabbed a quick chocolate bar on the dash through O'Hare to the Delhi flight.
Just a generic whine ... these damn air planes are designed for people 5 ft 8 inches. The head rest, for those of us who reached that height in their very early teens, hits just in the middle of the shoulder blades. With absolutely no leg room and being forced to sit with a your spine curved like a pretzel, it was not long before I was dreaming of Advil. Little did I know, that these seats are designed for larger (?) North Americans, and the planes in the Far East are designed for considerably smaller people. More fun to come...!
The direct flight from Chicago to New Delhi was in a Boeing 777 which as you know is a huge aircraft. We were dirt lucky on that flight as we had a bulk head seat, and the one between Elsie and I was empty. Now comes the bad news. The seats are still designed for munchkins and sitting with in 3 rows of us must have been 15 babies all under 2 years of age. The resulting
racket was pure hell ... added to the "sore as tooth ache" back, and you can see that I was not a happy camper. You know, I have no direct hatred of babies ... but I am now a convert to the concept of No Smoking flights and as well NO BABY flights. As bad as second hand cigarette smoke is to the health of those around the smoker, the health of people who have to listen to babies who are upset at temperature changes, pressure changes, noise, etc. etc. are just as negatively impacted. I still do not understand how something that small can have lungs that powerful!!. Now before you all label me as the curmudgeon of the year, remember this was a 15 hour flight. What would be so hard to schedule all baby flights on a Sunday for example, and then let the rest of us survive? Remember that these babies don't even have to pay for a seat!!!!!
Time to this point 10 1/4 + 15 = 25 1/4 hours and we were on the ground.
We are in INDIA!!!! It is 8:30 PM on some night or another ... we lost track of the days and times by now. We were met and driven into Delhi in the dark so we had no real clue of what we were in for except the traffic was chaotic. We expected that after our travels in Africa and Arab countries but little did we realize!!!!!
