June 10, 2012

08:45

Delhi Airport

Costa Coffee Lounge

(DFW = June 9, 2012 22:15)

Mudras decorate the entrance to immigration.

And so the adventure begins. I’ve missed my flight to Trivandrum and continue to be stuck in the Delhi airport. Literally. I cannot go downstairs to the international terminal where Michaela and I rented two hours to sit in a lounge with comfy chairs followed by three hours to a nap in a small room. Refreshments and wi-fi included in the price. I barely used either at the time, wanting only to sleep. Apparently ten plus hours on the two flights here wasn’t enough. Granted I realized when I put my head down that resting my neck was what I had actually been craving. That and curling up in the fetal position under some blankets.

First non-airplane food in sixteen hours.
Ah, the simple things in life! 

This of course is why I travel. It reveals the true joy of the simple things in life. Like sleeping in a bed. At least that’s one thing I’m pretty sure I can always count on: beds are beds. Toilets change form across oceans. What people eat and the way they eat can change even across state lines, but beds are always in the reclining in the position. I almost said flat, but then I had a flashback to the body-sized dip in my bed in the first house I stayed in in Costa Rica.

Back to the issue at hand. I’m stuck here, unable to go downstairs. Nor am I able apparently to go outside. A nice man with a machine gun instructed me in broken English to go a different exit, but I’d rather not risk not being able to enter the airport again since the reason behind all my trouble stems from confusion about a boarding pass that I still don’t have. My fault of course for not reading carefully all three boarding passes I received in DFW. But that was nearly thirty-six hours ago. That’s already a very different girl from the one I am now. One who was nervous about Indian toilets and understanding Indian English. Both things are not so daunting now as the Delhi airport has made the transition for Westerners pretty seamless.

Sit down toilets have both toilet paper and hoses to wash oneself. Neither the immigration nor the customs officer spoke to me at all, just took my paperwork and ushered me along. So I’m in India, but I could be in any pleasant airport in any part of the world really. In fact, I’m sitting in a Costa Coffee café, trying to remember if it wasn’t in the Costa Rica airport that I first encountered this chain.

Indira Gandhi International Airport
as seen from one of it's huge windows.

That’s another example of why I like to travel. Some people might call it globalization, and to an extend I guess it is when you’re talking about chain restaurants, but there’s also a certain universality of human beings that a person can only begin to understand through experience. A simple thank you at the end of what might be a stressful encounter—trying to get my boarding pass on time, trying to find my way back downstairs—signals my fellow beings that I have no hard feelings and elicits a smile from stoic Jet Airway ticketers and uniformed airport guards that speak minimal English.

To be honest, though I miss my partner in crime Michaela, who didn’t have the same trouble with her boarding pass and hopefully made our original flight, and though I don’t wish to worry Dr. Unnithan who  offered to pick us up from the airport, I’m actually enjoying my unexpected turn of events. Once I realized I would most likely be missing my flight, the nervousness of trying to rush left me, and I let a smile escape my lips as I thought, “Well, I came for an adventure, and so it begins.” It reminded me of the most important experience of traveling, one that I enjoy immensely when I remember to breathe.

I can’t quite put it in words. Something about the journey not the destination doesn’t encompass the true heart of it because if it were so, I wouldn’t need to travel to experience it. Learning how to be self-sufficient doesn’t work either. That’s something I’m still trying to master at home.

Traveling in one way makes a person realize how much we rely on each other whether it’s to book a new flight, find a restroom, or order food. The desire for self-sufficiency becomes absurd as I realize what an illusion that idea is. Maybe those simple but not always easy to swallow ideas are the reason I travel. Of course they can be experienced at home, but like most people, I find myself drawn to the comfort of autopilot when I’m at home, leaving said ideas well enough alone as I comfort myself with the idea that I have control over my experience. Here, stuck in the Delhi airport, following another culture’s unspoken rules that I have to have spelled out to me and so realizing how little effect my actions have on the outcome of events, I am able to experience with more clarity the power I do have over the perception of the events around me and to some extent other’s perception of the events in which I am a part.

Statues showing the beauty of yogic sun salutations, reminding me to breathe with each movement in life.

Case in point, Asha, the woman at the ticket counter who first had to tell me I wouldn’t make my flight, and I could have found ourselves exasperated and worn out at the beginning of a long day if I had decided that missing my original flight was unbearable, inexcusable, or oddly enough her fault in some way. Rather, I know from traveling the constraints by which all of us are confined, including official rules, unstated customs, and most importantly in this situation, time. Neither of us had the ability to get me to my flight, so I gratefully accepted the alternative, which was to take the next flight at six o’clock this evening. I had to come back later to get my boarding pass, which gave me time to walk around, find that I was stuck in the airport, and eventually decide to camp out in a very comfy chair in the café and start my blog, something I’ve been looking forward to. 

After coffee, breakfast, and a bathroom break, I found that the line at the ticket counter was gone, and Asha, who knew me as Ms. Lawrence by now, was very happy to give me a boarding pass and check my bag. There are so many more complicated and expensive ways this day could’ve turned out, so I’m glad I got to see Asha again and express my gratitude. From her smile, I understood the gratitude was reciprocated for my flow-with-the-go attitude. Acknowledging and accepting the lack of control human beings encounter in a great majority of situations has allowed me a better understanding of those things over which we can control, namely ourselves.

Me breathing easy as I wait for my last flight to Trivandrum.

I have now past the security check point and am finishing this blog entry in the domestic terminal of the Delhi Airport waiting for the next flight to Trivandrum. I was bound to get here one way or another. I’m so grateful I made it, and this short detour has given me time to look around the beautiful airport and a moment to reflect on the joyous adventure called traveling.