ALOFT ON MY WAY HOME VIA DEL, FRA AND IAH
TO GET BACK HOME-SOMEHOW-
WITH A PLAN TO CONTINUE AS THE LAST STILL-CLOSED AIRPORT-DCA--REOPENS
Oct. 1, 2001
What news would you like first-the story of the medicine box that I had carried up and down the East Coast and struggled so valiantly to get to the Indian Medical Missions---or my own story about how to try to get back home given the disruption in the world's plans that included the postponement of the Nepal trip?
DELHI ARRIVAL, AND TRYING TO GET MY BAG CLAIMED IN INDIA
AND TRYING TO GET ME OUT OF THE SAME NATION
When I arrived in Delhi, I tried to talk to the driver who met us at the train station and write his name into the authorization letter to pick up the medicines at the DEL airport, which I understand have arrived after I did, and which would be useful for successive medical missions, especially after all the effort that went into getting them here. The medicines missed the Ladakh Mission in August when Meg Irwin tried to order them, and missed the Spiti Valley mission on which I had checked them along for this trip, just completed, but without them since they did not arrive with me. I turned over the claim checks, a Xerox copy of my passport, and authorization letters to the driver from Ambassador Travel, and he nodded a vigorous assent to everything I said-and understood none of it.
So, Rajeesh Muharaj, his boss at Ambassador Travel, for whom Bert Winterhaller and Kelly Cobb were looking to set up their one-week excursion throughout India-Agra to Jaipur, since Kelly, at least, was planning on joining me in Nepal-now postponed to May 2002. He finally showed up to help them start up their itinerary with some starling news of his own.
We are his tourists of the fall. There were nine trips booked for October and November, with six of these scheduled with the Italians who are steady customers. 100% cancellation has occurred and NO ONE is traveling for these two months. He should be eager to get the business we represent. But I seem to be subsidizing the others who did not show. He asked that I pay for the transfer fee for the pick-up at the train station and the delivery to the airport at 750 R's each or 1500 R's or $32.00 US. This should be included in getting the trip concluded, but I was so happy to see the medicine box claim materials in his hand and hear that he would pick up the medicine box tomorrow and transfer it to Hem Thakkur who should also be coming tomorrow so that it could be carried back to Simla for the next mission, that I paid it.
He then took the information I had so carefully Xeroxed, phoned and faxed to Delhi, and after one quick call we learned that NONE of it had been preserved. So, I would have to appear even earlier at the airport, and hassle with the desk agents, who did not even appear until 11:00 PM for the 2:25 AM flight. I should go directly to the L/H ticket office and let them know that I had tried to change the return according to the itinerary I had written and faxed to them.
LAST DANCE IN DELHI
I did all of this that was prescribed, after our residual foursome Bert, Kelly, Cheryl and I all waked over to the Gilmore's restaurant and had a real dinner. We celebrated this somewhat serendipitous trip with the dinner, followed by what they called the "Alaskan Bomb"-which was Baked Alaska by anyone else's definition. We walked back through the gauntlet of beggars and requests for help, ranging from Chapatis to getting someone operated on. I resisted all these heart-rending requests, made easier by the fact that I could recognize the babies that had been passed around as the hooks to fish out swimmers or other jetsam from the harbor.
I appeared at the airport at 9:00 PM after our big dinner and a quick shower in Bert's and Kelly's room, and then went on a search for the Lufthansa office other than the check-in gate which was not going to open anyway until several hours after our arrival at the airport. I finally found the well-hidden Lufthansa office, and heard the bad news.
The ticket I hold is worthless unless used on the legs of the flight already laid out, and if I change the dates I owe them $175 per each flight segment for the change. Further, if I would like to buy a ticket from FRA to IAD, they will sell me one a t $3,000. They recommended that I simply discard the ticket I had and buy a new one from Delhi to IAD for only $2,000. I suggested that I might be able to take the ticketing as of the 7th of October and change the dates to today (many seats are available since they are assigned to people who have gone missing themselves at the time required for boarding) so I reserved today's date, and paid the date change fee for the same itinerary that would bring me to a destination city where I did not necessarily wish to end up the day. I found out that there was no way I could get back home without paying several thousand dollars besides holding a useless immovable ticket.
Now, the next part: if I pay the extra now, my duffel could be checked to IAH, but DCA wasn't even open as yet, the last of the nation's airports to remain closed. There was no assurance that I could get any kind of round trip to Washington from Houston, but I am on my way there-so, who knows what comes next except, a lot of additional time and cost in getting to a city a long way from where I need to be.
THE FRANKFURT TO DELHI LONG FLIGHT
The first flight of a very long day coming around the backside of the world was a blur of intentional drowsiness, in a bunch of Indian smells-some related to the cuisine and some to the passengers, I, perhaps, among them.
FRANKFURT SPECIAL BOUND-FOR-AMERICA SECURITY
On arrival in FRA, I said goodbye to Cheryl, and was directed into the "sterilized" terminal of the FRA airport, where flights to the USA are checked in for final boarding and some extra attention. I stood in the long line at the supernumerary Security check and X-Ray machine, and had a body search as well as a Pittsburgh-born American former GI stationed in Germany before going private with the security firm in Berlin, where he liked living, until he was brought down to do the intensive security checks here in Frankfurt, where he did not want to be living, pulled me over after my bags had gone through the X-Ray. He went over every item in the bags, piling them on the table and scrambling them thoroughly. He said I had dangerous articles, and took my key chain with its small one-centimeter Swill Army blade, and packaged it in a red envelope, which would have to be gate checked, and would next appear on the carrousel of Houston baggage claim, considerably outweighed by everyone's boxes of international luggage.
TWELVE HOUR A-340 AIRBUS LUFTHANSA FLIGHT
FROM FRANKFURT ACROSS THE ATLANTIC, GREENLAND,
LAKE MICHIGAN AND TEXAS
I sat next to a young fellow who was across the aisle from his younger wife. He was reading a Czech newspaper, and I gave him my Herald-Tribune when I had read it. He turned out to be a cardiac surgery resident in a junior position in Prague at the very same cardiac surgical institute I had visited when I had gone to Prague-the same year he was born! His wife was a cardiology resident in the same center, affiliated with Charles University, which I had visited. They were coming to Houston to a six-week exchange program hosted by Denton Cooley, now 76 years old, at the Texas heart institute. He and Michael De Bakey are both still alive, and still archrivals, although neither is operating on twenty patients a day as heretofore. I invited him to attend the ACS program in New Orleans next week as a guest of the International Committee.
I am now headed across Greenland, which looks a lot cooler than the other venues
I had been in this week-even the Chandratal Lake that had inspired such fear
in my younger wimpoid colleagues by flurrying a few snowflakes around them.
It was no doubt cooler below than the projected 29* C or 82* F predicted at
Houston. But the routing was across Labrador and a part of Canada above Ontario
then directly down the middle of Lake Michigan passing Chicago and Saint Louis
(I saw the Mississippi Bridge and the Arch from overhead of both) and on lower
over Arkansas Ozarks on into what looks like a rather over-watered Houston Texas.
I will put this machine away now in the rather comfortable A-340 brand new Airbus,
and see what bizarre connections await me. I had stopped at the Lufthansa Service
center and asked them there for a Continental reservation round trip from Houston
to DC and back in time to catch my Oct 7 New Orleans arrival, and they printed
out the flights that were booked into IAD and BWI-still no service into DCA-and
said to me that none were being shown as available, and if they were, the price---here
the agent gulped---would be 4,850 DM, which translated into only $3,250 US-but
you may be able to do batter by going to a travel agent in Houston-I had better!