Sunday February 22 - India to Korea...

I didn’t get to sleep until about 2 am last night…wished I could have gone sooner but was fussing trying to get internet at the Radisson in Dehi. The drive to Coimbatore airport following my meeting with the bishop was good, and both Mrinalini and Susheila bade me a gracious farewell. The weather is cooler today and there were no lines. My flight took off and when I glanced through the in flight magazine I noticed there was no “line” drawn from Coimbatore directly to Delhi for this airline…Spice Air. After a nervous moment I found a page with schedules and noticed that my flight would stop in Hyderabad. No problem, except that I had assumed I’d be Delhi sooner. I slept on both flights but when I arrived in Delhi…expecting the worst given my outbound flight congestion from there, it was easy since I was arriving at the DOMESTIC terminal and most of the HUGE mess is in the international terminal…..MAN that’s a huge new one they are building for the 2010 soccer cup. No one was waiting….tho there were dozens of marked signs….so I stood a bit…used my cell to call Pln Murthy, the new friend I met at the National Prayer Breakfast 2 weeks ago. He was meeting me at the Radisson….said he’d check in at 2:30pm Kit had said he was sending a car, but I didn’t want to mix up something he was doing and the usual Radisson shuttle. Well he said the guy was there…so I checked again. No luck. Called Pln a second time, then got a text message saying wait at the Nescafe kiosk…not sure from whom it came…probably the hotel driver. Replied that there was no Nescafe kiosk. Got another one soon saying they’d be at Arrivals in 10 minutes…..so who was the earlier text from? Anyway eventually the driver and hotel rep found me…said they had come at 3pm (apparently word of my the college’s flight change never got to Radission) and they had come again at 7pm….Murthy and his local pastor friend had tapped contacts to search the airline databases for my name…..and either I or Kit had mistakenly emailed that the change flight would come at 6:45….not realizing it stopped over in Hyderabad. Finally they came….poor guys…trying to find me was an all day affair. Enroute to the hotel we got in an accident….our little hotel car got squeezed out of our lane by a huge end loader (part of that 24/7 construction in Delhi…and hit posts that protected us from falling into a huge water channel at the very edge of the road. It disabled the car but the driver made the right choice….those 7 foot giant rubber tires would have climbed all over our little car and crushed us. When we couldn’t move, I realized we’d better get out…I was in the back seat of a tin can…with 2 lanes of high speed traffic bearing down on me. We stood for 30 minutes while the hotel sent a second car. That one had a manager in it and you could see he was REAL worried I’d sue or something. It did work for great upgrade….probably the best hotel room I’ve ever had! Murthy came to the room at midnight and we talked till 1:30…..so THAT was an eventful Saturday night!
Today, Murthy and I agreed we’d NOT go to church. Turns out we could have, since his friends church wasn’t as far as he figured and didn’t last 2 ½ hours. In fact the pastor friend….Sukhwant Batia with Seek Partners, who had come over last night to chat with Murthy and me…but had to go home when I didn’t arrive at any of the predicted times!....came to the hotel after he preached and we had a good time to talk. He expressed what others have said in India….that American funds are often not used well. I found myself expressing what I often don’t express…namely that I think Americans in the past few years have grown tired of being criticized even hated while still expected to give to everyone in smarter ways.
Anyway, instead of church this morning Murthy and I had a wonderful 2 ½ breakfast in the hotel….with wonderful Indian food much of which I had never eaten! The service was amazing throughout my entire time…the suite fantastic….and Murthy figures it was because they wanted to MAKE SURE I didn’t sue them!
While everyone seemed to think I needed to be at the airport 3 hours or at least 2 ½ hours before my flight…..Murthy and I left together tho in separate hotel cards at 1:10….by 1:45 I was checked in and through security at the gate! I have to say that my AA Gold card is worth it’s weight in gold…since it lets me board whenever I want..and with hand luggage doing that early is handy (sic!)
Flight to Hong Kong was smooth…I slept. I did feel funny that we flew over Hanoi! Like flying over Moscow was odd too for this Cold War Vietnam War age American. I must say they feed you well on every flight! No peanuts here…but full hot meals even on shorter hops. Arrived in Korea early Monday morning at 3:45am….but the good news is that I am now 3 ½ hours ahead of India (EST +12…half way around the 24 hour world from home in Virginia Beach) so if you allow for the time difference I actually got to rest in Korea by 6am Seoul time (sic!) which is about the same time I went to bed in India.