India to Australia - 3days and rising!


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Oceania » Australia
March 2nd 2006
Published: March 25th 2006
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Well, here I stand in Singapore airport, dazed and confused waiting for the final leg of my journey to Australia. It's been 3days now since I began what has turned out to be one long non-stop journey to Australia and though I'm very tired and suffering from another case of the runs (particularly bad this time) I'm still smiling.

As my old and good friend Richard would say - "it's either laugh or cry". So I laugh.

Starting at the beginning of this Journey I was in Jaisalmer, in the far west of India (Rajasthan), close to the border with Pakistan. A random collection of events had led me to make a last minute dive to this place with Becky and Fiona.

After rushing back from our 'camel safari' and scoffing some food we legged it for the train station where we thought we would be just in time to catch our overnight train... Because we made it in time of course, sods law didn't have a chance to intervene and make the normally late trains on time. The train left 2hrs late in the end and halfway along I said goodbye to my wives Becky and Fiona over a cup of chai at their stop.

Eventually, something like 18hrs later, the train pulled into Delhi and when everyone else got off (including all the other tourists I could see) I jumped off too. Half an hour of wondering around deliberating later I figured out that I'd got off at the wrong station (Old Delhi not New Delhi) and was 5km from where I needed to be. Early on some guy had tried to tell me this, explaining that he was a police officer and that I would need to take a rickshaw 5km to where I needed to be. Thinking I was wise to Indian ways I dismissed this bluntly and was quite rude to him. The boy who cried wolf perhaps? The only thing in this scenario though is that the boy who cried wolf still went away laughing.

I was supposed to have six hours in Delhi to have a shower, perhaps change my clothes and eat a last supper somewhere but time was running out and I now had only 2hrs until I needed to check in so, given that the Airport is 1hr away, I jumped in a rickshaw for the airport after arguing with a few over the prices they were trying to charge me.

I remember thinking to myself that my final experiences in India couldn't possibly be more appropriate and this was just the beginning!

After hours waiting at the airport even after my plane was due to leave it turned out my first flight had been cancelled because the plane I was supposed to be on didn't quite make it to Delhi and landed early in Ahmedabad. Better then than when I was on the flight I suppose. When it was eventually announced that the flight was cancelled - up until now they had been saying "it will be here in a few minutes" - there was a lot of chaos and mix ups trying to organise people to get to a hotel to stay the night. It was like watching a bunch of 5 year olds trying to organise things.

Cutting things short basically we caught another flight, missed our connection, got put in a great 4 star all inclusive beach resort with all the amenities in Sri Lanka the next night and then caught the next plane which came via KL to here.

Here I'll be waiting for another couple of hours until I can catch my hopefully final, on-shedule flight, to Brisbane...

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