Days 1-3: Airports of the World

Day 01

Leaving Detroit around noon on Christmas added just the right touch to the surreal beginnings of what is proving to be the trip of a life time. I was already feeling a bit nervous about this trip when I realized just how close I would be cutting it in New York. I needed to get from La Guardia to JFK to meet the rest of Team Good Korma, in about 2 hours. My flight was circling the airport and I thought for sure that I would miss my connecting flight. Luckily I caught a cab quickly and made it to the airport just in time. I didn't find my the team at first and again thought that this ill-planned trip could end before it began. So many things were going through my head, not least of which was just how much of this trip was unknowable. It was incredibly unsettling.

We all hooked up at the gate and were on our way to Moscow without incident. Aeroflot airlines is strange. I'm not unfamiliar with Russians living in Chicago, but it was strange being on a Russian plane full of Russians. We were running around trying to get to our various airports and so relieved to finally be on our way. When we sat back in our chairs, seats in an upright and locked position and prepared for take off, it suddenly hit all of us. No one spoke English. The signs, emergency preparedness cards, magazines - were all in Russian. Our exit from the States had been very swift. It was the beginning of what we knew would be a completely foreign experience.

Aeroflot still uses some of the ex-Soviet military planes for passengers. We had a plane with a 12 foot ceiling. It looked as if they had back out the army tanks and bolted in some rows of chairs. Frightening. The food was worse. As some odd nod to our final desitination, the chicken option on the flight was curried. Well a not-so-close Russian approximation of what they thought curry must be like.

We arrived in Moscow over 8 hours after leaving NYC. For us it was 2:30 in the morning but in Moscow it was 10:30 am. We were bedraggled and delirious. After negotiating customs we settled in to finding a Russian equivalent of coffee. Half-way to the cafe it dawned on us that we only had 2 of the 3 camera cases we were supposed to have. It must have seemed strange to the crowds of smoking Russians buying duty free perfume and Johnny Walker Scotch to see us sprinting back through the terminal. Shockingly the surly Russian military woman working the customs desk let us run back to our plane. She rolled her eyes and said that it was locked but one of us could try. I jumped towards the gate and pounded on the door for the workers I could see down the gate hallway leading to the airplane entrance. They looked and walked away. I wasn't getting back on the plane. Our customs officer 'friend' realized she should be hassling us more and shooed us the transit office to register a complaint. This was looking bad. On the way to the office we discussed possibly replacing the film that was in the case forgotten in the overhead compartment. We knew that medium format film would be hard to come by. It occured to me that we just might able to asked the military officers if they could find any film for us. I suspected that they might be able to find the exact type and quantity that we lost and probably even have a prelabeled bag for us. We also considered the unpleasantness of the Russian jails and rethuoght this strategy. The folks at the transit office, an office for just this type of traveler situation, seemed mildly angry that we were bothering them. Turns out the whole thing appeared too fishy for them. Security found the missing case but weren't liking the looks of things. Michael had to go and watch them search it and vouch for it's purpose. We got the film back and enjoyed a little repast.

After this incident we each took ownership of one of the bags. This wasn't going to happen again, we were making sure of this.

Our flight from Moscow to Delhi was another 7 hours. This put is well into the evening of the 26th, India time. An odd thing happens to Delhi each end of December. Delhi likes to shroud itself completely in fog. This wasn't good. We circled Delhi for awhile and they finally diverted us to Mombai. It was frustrating because not speaking Russian, we had very little information to go on. Mombai (Bombay) is a few hours south by plane. On the one had it was closer to our final destination, Kochi, on the other, we hadn't entered immigration yet and probably couldn't leave the airport.

We arrived at nearly midnight and began one of the most uncomfortable nights of the trip. Aeroflot said we'd get back on the plane and return north to Delhi when they heard that the fog had cleared. The Mombai International terminal is a pit of dispair. There is very little to eat. Very few places you'd want to sit. And we couldn't find an Aeroflot representative or get a straight answer from anyone.

Team Good Korma was in a sorry state. We hadn't slept in over a day and were clearly feeling the depths of exhaustion that comes from 24 hours of travel.

At around 2 in the morning we got a free dinner from Aeroflot. Our excited plane load of passengers headed for the restaurant, only to find that "dinner" was a single, small fried vegetable thingie, a handful of potato chips, and ketchup.

Around 4am there was a near riot because no one could get an answer as to when we were leaving. Unlike many other airports, there were no ticketing desks where we were at. There was no place to go to make a stink. The very occasional official looking person that happen to walk by was immediately surround by screaming people. It was getting ugly.

I could go on and on, but long story short, we left for Delhi the next day at 2pm. We were on day 3 of our trip and we were heading away from where we need to be.

Anthony