AUG-A-6

AN UPDATE ON “FREQUENT NON-FLYER”

TRIPS TO LEH AIRPORT,

AND A RETURN TO RE-CHECK-IN AFTER PREPARATIONS FOR AN EARLY MORNING DEPARTURE,

WHICH SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MOVED BACK AGAIN BY YET ANOTHER DAY, MISSING MY LUFTHANSA INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT FROM DELHI,

AND A RETURN TO THE HOTEL KHANGRI, LEH FOR ANOTHER TRY AGAIN TOMORROW

August 22, 2003

I am back again in the Hotel Khangri after checking out for the fifth time this series of trips. At 5:45 AM the whole team had been out front with all the bags and baggage stacked up for loading into a half dozen taxis for the trip to the Leh Airport. Each of them was confirmed except Kishor and me, whose tickets were bollixed up by Ambassador Travel in Delhi to “Void” our return flight from Leh to Delhi. He is confirmed on the Air France flight tonight from Delhi for a return to his senior sub-internship at Cooper Hospital of UMDNJ which turns out to be run now by my old friend Patch Dellinger. I am confirmed on the Lufthansa flight at 2:30 AM a half hour after his—and neither of us will make it.

I had separated my bags into three destinations—one stays here in Leh for the next Ladakh and/or Lingshed Trek, one is packed with all my gear needed for the next Sikkim trip and will be carried forward to Simla, and my backpack with its Lufthansa plastic bag cover was ready for check-in while I carried the small daypack and a computer case for carry-on. They are all back here with me ready to try again on the same shuffle.

We arrived in the Leh airport during its only active hour of the day, the hour just after dawn. It is only at that time before the mountains make the weather that obscures them, and the air heats with the rising sun to a lesser density for the lift needed at takeoff of the world’s highest commercial jet port, at 11,800 feet according to the sign at the entrance where IndianOil has its jet fuel dump. I and Kishor went in with our “unconfirmed tickets” and all the others got on. After the final call was made it seemed there was one open seat. Kishor and I were discussing it, he suggesting that I take it since I was on my way to Alaska, and I suggested he should not be a day late for the start of his sub-internship. We had decided to flip for it. Hem was talking to the captain about the very little we had in the way of baggage and was putting each bag forward when the flight was closed. As we had been putting the baggage in, one of the desk agents had slipped a boarding pass to a friend for a bribe, and a fight broke out. No matter that the agent was caught in flagrante, we were stranded, and we now started using this position as a bargaining one for the best solution possible. Instead of getting in the vehicles to go to Manali, and hope for another road transport to Delhi—all of it adding up to several days on the road under the best of connections—we used the incident to argue for a guaranteed Leh-Delhi confirmation for tomorrow. It turned out that I got one, but that is still pending for Kishor. This means that we both miss our international flights late tonight; but that we can start now to work on a new arrangement for the ongoing LH and AF long haul tickets to leave Delhi if we can once get there. The air trip of an hour beats the road trip of a week (if all went as well as it never does!)

With this hope, more than assurance, we returned now to re-check into the hotel Khangri for a day of cooling heels and typing when there is electricity on the postponed items I have backlogged, and reading the book I borrowed from Charlie who had finished it, “Doctor on Everest” by Kenneth Kamler when the power goes off. I have “re-packed” and pulled out the outline I have begun on the Year End Christmas Letter, which I had completely typed here for last year in the intermittent times of electricity while waiting through the three days between the Ladakh-02 and Linghsed-02 groups when the partners for the Stok Khangri climb had each welched out. I had hoped to do that this year as well, but there was no “gap” long enough between the trips, and I thought it better to add the climb to the end when the new arrivals would already be acclimatized, so Rob and matt will be taking off for the four days climb with Tsespol which I had organized for them under the assumption that I would already be returned. If I knew I could get a flight out of Leh, I might have tried to book in the four days on the Stok Khangri myself as well, rather than just burning up that time on the long road trip back, but it now seems that I might avoid the long ride with a flight that has been heavily negotiated for after repeated missed chances through no fault of my own, so I will hope for better things for tomorrow’s repeat early morning queuing up through the security that will once again expose my 800-ASA speed PhotoWorks film four times in succession in just boarding this domestic flight before the serious international flight security has a chance to expose all that film again to their antiquated equipment.

LATE BREAKING WORD:

I AM NOW CONFIRMED ON THE LEH-DELHI FLIGHT TOMORROW;

GOOD NEWS!

AND NOW, IN OTHER NEWS, THE BAD:

THERE ARE ALLEGEDLY NO OPEN SEATS ON THE RETURN

INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS FOR WHICH WE HAD TRIED TO CHANGE THE BOOKING MISSED TODAY TO TOMORROW NIGHT

It seems, that after an entire morning attempting the confirmation of the Leh to Delhi early morning Jet Airways flight, we have been successful, and the ticket is even stamped confirmed after the fourth trip to the Leh office of Jet Air. But the telephone reservation for the day-later Lufthansa flight is still unconfirmed and we need to go to the Ambassador Travel Agency—the same folks who so badly screwed us up in the first place—in Connaught Place in downtown Delhi after arrival there (what are the chances they will be there on a Saturday morning?) to get them confirmed and stamped. With a prepatory phone call to Delhi to tell them we were coming, they were evasive about when they would be there on a Saturday, but were emphatic on one subject—there are no seats available on either Air France or Lufthansa out of Delhi to be confirmed. I figured there must be other similar strandees like us who are not on the flights due to no fault of their own so that it should be worth standing by in the airport at 2:35 AM anyway. But the last time I did that, they surcharged me as much as a new ticket was worth, a charge that was never refunded or reimbursed for a similar cause of action on the agent’s part.

So, the drama continues to unfold. I have used an unusual period of electricity being on at the hotel Khangri, after the Simla group of the Himalayan Health Exchange drove off at noon toward their destination three days away, as I was glad not to be among them on the endless road journeys. So, I have retreated into the Hotel Khangri and used the electricity to type up the first three months of the year-end letter, a similar task as I had set about during the three day interval between Ladakh-02 and Linhgshed-02 last year when the Stok Khangri climb colleagues all dropped out in order to shop and socialize in Leh.

I will try to catch up in a progress report on the Perils of Peregrinations as and if I can get to Delhi to an internet Café that will allow me to assure you that I have not permanently immigrated to India. .

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