A day at the airport.

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Well the fourteenth day turned out to be an interesting one. We were up and out of the hostel by 6 to get a taxi to the airport, there were still drunk stragglers wandering around and we took care to haggle with the driver so he didn't try and charge us a late night fee.

The check in process involved an inordinate amount of queueing and once that was done we found out our plane was delayed by an hour. Not too concerned we wandered around the taxi and bought a couple of things then found our gate and waited. And waited. Our flight was repeatedly announced to be delayed by 30 minutes until soon two and a half hours had passed. Upon handing out meal vouchers we were informed our gate was changing and sent on our way. After a total of over five hours we were allowed to board the plane with much relief.

Sitting on the plane for over forty minutes we realised something was amiss as not only were we roasting (the plane was literally acting like an oven sat in the Thai heat crammed full of people) but we were also completely stationary. Eventually the pilot asked us all to disembark and that is where it truly became chaotic!

We were put on buses back to the airport and told to queue up to be ferried to a hotel for the night to then join another flight the following morning. As we reached the front of the queue a woman mentioned that our plane was actually likely to be flying after all, they just needed to fix the technical issue that had been stalling us all day. They predicted a couple of hours and Alice thought it would be best if everyone knew so proceeded to spread the news, this essentially began a revolution and we ended up with a crowd following us (in what could very well have been the wrong direction as far as we knew).

Another meal voucher and some pizza later and we were asked to board once again - nine hours after our original departure time. People had been very kind, an old man handed out cold cans of drink, people gave each other advice and help and at that point it felt a bit like we were all part of a big 'plane family'. The plane had not become any cooler inside and after another very long and stifling wait (while they loaded our bags on, not a great order to do things in!) we finally took off.

Everyone cheered and the rest of the flight went smoothly, the food was disappointing but it seems they had had to borrow some from another plane and by that point I was just happy to be on my way to India. We were met by Alice's parents at the airport which was a nice surprise and they took us to the little rooftop restaurant at the hotel where we bought a few little things to eat and looked out over the balcony for our first tastes of Delhi. I was immediately struck by the smokiness of the air, visibility was very limited across the city although the sounds of horns blaring remained as loud as ever. Stray dogs were trotting in and out of tuk tuks carrying pieces of rubbish and despite it being late there were people wandering everywhere.

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