The Journey Home...
This is it. Three years and one month of longing, tears and woe have finally paid off. I'm in Mumbai, India. My hometown, with my loved ones. The journey home was a long interesting one with a lot of ups downs and some funny incidents. I'm going to try and squeeze those twenty five hours of anticipation, travel through three time zones, miso soup, intermittent back aches, smoked atlantic salmon, desi dhakkans into a tiny excerpt within this blog. I've always had a reputation for being verbost, excessively elaborate and circumventing before making a point. But it's been more than worth it. The very moment the airplane touched down at Chatrapati Shivaji Airport was something of a 'my life passed before my eyes'moment. The smell of the airport, the familiar clamour of cops, passengers, porters and customs officials.
I had a eight hour lay over stop over at Changi Airport which was eventually cut short by two hours since the departure was delayed. Ostensibly, there was some major volcanic activity in Anchorage, AK coupled with ash-laden winds and hence, procuring a flight plan was delayed. We took off from LAX at about 1:35 am PST and after a gruelling fifteen hour flight ( a good one hour fifty minutes more than the usual route) the plane landed in Taipei at 8:03 local time. I watched the Transporter 2 and The Constant Gardener on the flight. Apart from really enjoying the braised tofu and atlantic salmon! That was my first realization of sorts that I was headed home. After the sixty minute stop for refuelling, we departed for lovely city of Singapore and its magnificent airport, The Changi at 12:26 pm local time. I was pretty tired when I reached Singapore so I decided to get a room in their Transit Hotel and cool my heels. For lunch I had some really good fishball and miso soup.
From Singapore to Mumbai, the flight lasted a good five hours and twenty minutes, aided with some real desi garb resonating throughout the aircraft. Once we landed at CST Mumbai, the paper work took as little as 35 minutes. My father had walked in all the way past the baggage claim and immigration counters! Boy was I happy to see him!
I had a eight hour lay over stop over at Changi Airport which was eventually cut short by two hours since the departure was delayed. Ostensibly, there was some major volcanic activity in Anchorage, AK coupled with ash-laden winds and hence, procuring a flight plan was delayed. We took off from LAX at about 1:35 am PST and after a gruelling fifteen hour flight ( a good one hour fifty minutes more than the usual route) the plane landed in Taipei at 8:03 local time. I watched the Transporter 2 and The Constant Gardener on the flight. Apart from really enjoying the braised tofu and atlantic salmon! That was my first realization of sorts that I was headed home. After the sixty minute stop for refuelling, we departed for lovely city of Singapore and its magnificent airport, The Changi at 12:26 pm local time. I was pretty tired when I reached Singapore so I decided to get a room in their Transit Hotel and cool my heels. For lunch I had some really good fishball and miso soup.
From Singapore to Mumbai, the flight lasted a good five hours and twenty minutes, aided with some real desi garb resonating throughout the aircraft. Once we landed at CST Mumbai, the paper work took as little as 35 minutes. My father had walked in all the way past the baggage claim and immigration counters! Boy was I happy to see him!
posted by Shaking Shenoy at 1/15/2006 11:49:00 PM
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