OCT-A-8
UP AND AWAY, ABOARD AIR FRANCE,
FOR THE NEXT TWENTY FOUR HOURS OF MY
LIFE,
TO TRANSIT STOPS IN PARIS AND DELHI,
WITH THE MED PACKS CHECKED THROUGH TO
BAGDOGRA, SIKKIM
October 5--6, 2003
I am reveling in the immersion in the French language, which I feel I should be able to use if only I were here long enough. But Air France is only the carrier that will bring me to the far side of the world, and French is not my destination—this time. Where I will be I already know, in the way it is apparent on my mapping of everywhere else I have gone in the least several years—on a precisely denoted piece of planet Earth>
I am now in CDGP (Charles De Gaulle, Paris)
I will be in DELI (the stopover in the Hotel )
I will then arrive in Bagdogra, = BAGD = 26* 42N, 88* 18 E
Heading toward Gangtok, = GANG= 27* 19N, 88* 36E
These two towns are going to be a road trip for us that are estimated at five hours plus, although on the Great Circle Arc they are 78.2 km apart, or 100 km by the shortest road routes.
I will be near the third highest mountain peak on the Planet Earth in the Himalayan chain called Kanchenchunga, which is 8,595 meters (compare with Everest, the highest, at 8,850 meters.)
All of this may have a bit more interest to me on this Himalayan trip since I have not been here before. But, then, neither has anyone else in the Himalayan Health Exchange been here before and this is our inaugural visit to the area we have worked long and hard at getting started—Sikkim. Since any new start is a perpetually repeated promise of “La Prochain Fois” I must limit the number of new “starts” I do or to delete those I have done often. I am thinking of giving the Mindanao Philippines trip a pass this year, since I am counted upon as a regular, but the events of the year like the remodeling and the Hurricane Isabel out-of-pocket luxury costs of cleaning up the downfalls have impacted my “luxury spending “ on repeated mission trips. I had promised to do the Zanskar Lingshed Trek one more time, not for my sake, but as a guide to a couple of others who had not yet done it, though plans had been made the last two times to join together for this exhilarating challenge. So, I will have to reconsider the many options, since the Haiti trips seem to be starting up for repetition, and the Southern African requests are going to be steadily recurrent as well.
THE FLIGHT FROM IAD TO CDG, PARIS
AIR FRANCE 39
BOEING 777 SERVICE
I arrived at Dulles and checked in the small bag I had packed and one of the MAP packs. They could not tell me if Sarah Pawley, a Creighton University sophomore medical student who was supposed to meet me here had already checked in and they refused to page her. So, I had to go to the baggage claim area and try paging her from there. That is a mess, since the bags cannot be left and we had to work on getting the bags down and her found from the far reaches of Dulles airport. She did respond to the page, eventually and we got her big duffel bag up with mine and she got a chance to check in and jumped the queue since I brought her to the agent I had told to be on the lookout for here. This business of the MAP packs can only be carried by the single person with a license, and that is increasingly hard for me. In juggling lots of extra baggage it is difficult to travel alone, leaving one ahead and running back for the others, leapfrogging forward. Since only two bags per person can be checked, without surcharges of $100 each, I have to spread them out among whomever is traveling on the same flight. This is often very difficult to determine since it is often someone I do not know and who has never met me—as today, for example. It is easy for anyone to say I should just carry the MAP packs because that means no one else has to do so, but I am also the one who has to hassle the customs agents at the Delhi importation, who are curious about what I am carrying in and why I have not declared it an d paid duty on it. I carry the gift certificates and the packing list, and they are still more curious on how all this valuable medicine has got into the country without duty.
I watched a couple of French movies or documentaries on the flight, and tried to type a bit, which did not go far after the lights were turned off. I am now arriving at what would be about the nadir of my night in Maryland, but is just pre-dawn in a chill damp Paris at CDG.
LARCENY IN THE NAME OF SECURITY
In politics, the dirtiest secrets could be swept under the title of national security, and in the travel business, any two bit kid with a badge can declare the law as he sees it and confiscate anything he would like to have under the name of security. As I arrived in CDG we went through yet another security screening, and I was supposed to put the bags through X-Ray going from one secured area to another. As my backpack came through, one of the agents said, “Heh, isn’t this a neat little device?” and pointed to the stylish carabineer clip I had on the outside back of my backpack to hold attachments. One of the other agents grabbed it and said “It is forbidden,” and took it to put in his pocket. He simply confiscated it. I waited and asked for the return of my carabineer. “Oh, no; it is a hook, that is to be used as a weapon, and is strictly forbidden.”
Right! How many security checks has that attachment gone through in plain sight on the outside f the pack in the open, and only this covetous callow French fellow who wanted it had protected the traveling public from such an ingenious weapon that I cannot figure out how it would affect anyone with good or ill intent to use it to overpower anything except perhaps to clip a belt to a handle somewhere. “Security!” It covers a amutlitiude of sins!
I got a poor and late GPS reading in the French countryside here and boarded an A-340 Airbus for a bumpy takeoff on our way now toward Delhi.
FORWARD, NOW, TO DELHI
AND A RATIONAL SYSTEM (FOR THEM) OF FULL EMPLOYMENT
HAS MY THROUGH CHECKED BAGS ACCOMPANYING ME AND HANDLED FOUR TIMES
FURTHER IN CHECKING IN TO THE
AJANTA HOTEL
I thought I had scored a clever coup, by asking that the bags and MAP packs be checked through to Bagdogra, Sikkim, and there on the tags is their final destination, clearly typed in. But, after clearing immigration, I have to go to pick up the bags in Delhi to clear Customs. True to from, IK am stopped for the flashy looking MAP packs and told by an officious white uniformed customs officer who stops to ask about the MAP packs. I produce all the Gift Certificates, physician licenses, and the bill of lading, and he says it is all wonderful that I am a volunteer, but the drugs are another matter and I owe import duty on them, so come over right here and have all your bags X-rayed a third time since arrival in Delhi. I send them all through, there is no evidence of their having been X0Rayed yet again, and I walked right by the same official after the delay of getting this done redundantly, and hand my customs slip to another fellow who waves me through.
But in going through, the bags are not transferred forward for their domestic through-checked destination and I now have to struggle with them as I leave the immigration hall. Ah, that is where the surplus Indian labor comes in! I am swarmed over, of course, by dozens of would-be porters, and struggle to keep Sarah Pawley in sight while fending off the offers of such generous service—even one who snatched my fleece vest from me to carry such an onerous burden for re-ransom on return. I did not see the usual waiting agent driver, who was eventually found holding up a sign that aside Himalayan Health Exchange with three names: Mine, Sarah’s and a Candace Hunter—whom I had never seen and who presumably was on our flight. There is nothing to be done but to sit down and sit until she finds us. That was finally accomplished after a deliberate period of reading the book I had carried. Then we fought through another very aggressive group of porters to the distantly parked vehicle to get redundant offers of help inflicted upon us at every turn. Now I have the four bags that are not needed at all in Delhi, crowding us out of the small Hillman, and off we go.
Where are we going? I thought you knew. Well, we went to the wrong hotel, and then I directed the driver in how to get to the Ajanta Hotel after he had stopped to ask policemen a half dozen times. I am the equivalent of the local rickshaw driver in finding my way around Delhi, at least with respect to this hotel. We arrive at 1:30 AM. The doorman recognizes me and there is great rejoicing as to my homecoming, with about five accessory porters coming to participate in this feat. After we register in, the bags I suggest can be left downstairs, since they are already through-checked to Bagdogra, and I do not need them. We are then in a long line of processional with every porter carrying every bag up to a room on the third floor. What is this, do you need and extra bed? I thought they had got three rooms for the three of us, or at least two for the male and female divide, which they eventually decide would be a good thing. But, now the same porters are back in action and cart each bag off to each room in sequence, and finally after the mistake is recognized, yet another room is found for me and all of them are moved once again to get to me, as I am carrying my carry on bag which is all I need for the night. To dispel the notion that the instructions were not crystal clear the first time on not having to move these bags even out of the car that will simply stay parked until it takes us to the domestic air terminal in the morning, they make another trip around, this time dropping one of the bags off for Sarah, but not her bag, so they have to be re-shuffled. All of this seems to be quite excessive portering, and is apparently a well-designed scheme as they stand there and say “Thank you my friend.” I point out that I have my wallet packed in the bag that they just have mis-directed to Sarah and Candace’s room, and they once again scramble to have two porters pick it up and stand in great expectation: “My friend, tomorrow I am off duty.” I am about to beg off this feather bedding service, and shoo them out so that I can pee, when the doorbell rings, and one of them stands there to want to know when I will be needing a wake-up call. I tell him, and close the door to return to the john—doorbell rings, and there is one of the others, carrying a small bar of soap. I thank him and close the door, and, you guessed it, this time it is another with a roll of toilet paper. After I say “enough, enough, already`” of this hyperservicing for the mendicants who are never easily dismissed, I close the door, to take off my shoes and the door bell rings. OK-- that is it! I simply ignore it. It does not go away, and I cannot get to my solitude to do anything other than fend off these redundant mendicants, when I open the door with a bottle of mineral water in my hand. “We have been thinking you would be in need of a bottle of mineral water,” say the two porters, staring at the bottle in my hand and then still repeating their lame excuse for another appearance “You know that tomorrow I will not be on duty.” I suggested that he start now by taking the night off. There is no “Do not disturb” sign around, so two of the others camp on my doorstep.
It is apparent to me, that there are no tour groups and certainly no business customers at the Ajanta, and I am the single target of all this idyll excess manpower, and certainly the only one who looks like he could be semi-solvent. They are here to carry what ever I still have left off in little pieces, until I am nibbled to death by this army of leaf-cutting ants until there is more US currency in the Ajanta Hotel hangers on than there are Indian rupees.
I had made two very specific requests in advance for services that would be useful to me. First, would be to have the 20-80 Zoom lens that was repaired when I was in Leh by being sent to Delhi, now store in the Kashmiri merchants’ relatives shops in Connaught Place returned to me, and the other is to be sure my bag with the clothes and sleeping bag is forwarded as promised to Sikkim, which is why I ma packing along so little on this trip. What odds do you give that anything like this requested service is delivered, against the one hundred little unwanted interfering “services” that I cannot seem to turn off with an army of redundant “servants” eager to vend their services upon me?
India—a vast labor intensive economy in hot pursuit of the good life in the new and expanding access to a “service economy.”