"The Long & Winding Road"

Cock's fart. Phew! Yes, that's when we got up this morning. At 06h45, after three hours and 15 minutes of sleep, I dragged my body out of a warm bed, and roused myself under a tepid shower. Goddamn - it was faaaar too early for my liking!

I had been up packing bags and loading software onto my 3Com "Palm V", the device on which I am currently writing this report. Last month in South Africa I had bought a CD-ROM with 4,000 programmes for Palm computers...and I tried to look at them all in a few short hours. Jeez, I must go back and see what the "Antichrist" programme is all about!

I checked my e-mail. Luckily I had remembered to unsubscribe from the "Pommern-L" genealogy list of which I have been a member for the past year. Debra and I were going on holiday and 18 days of e-mail would be just too much to deal with on our return to Prague. I sent a quick reply to Francois Vorster...."Yes, Yes, Yes...'Dog Detachment' was the name of the 1980's rock group I was thinking of" and logged off.

My friend, commercial pilot and taxi driver Vratislav Petrzelka, called in that he would be ten minutes late. Fine with us - we still had a lot to do.....hydrate the pot plants, set the central heating, disconnect appliances, lock all doors and hide the keys. At 08h45 we were ready and carted our luggage down three floors of our apartment complex. Four half-full bags (two rucksacks and two roll-on cabin bags) seemed far too little for a motorcycle expedition from Nepal, through West Bengal, and into Bhutan. But, hey, we had checked and double-checked, and we had everything! Crash helmets and Kevlar reinforced body-armour included!

As reliable as always, Vrata was waiting for us at the entrance of Janovského 36/919. The blue Citroen diesel was clean and comfortable. We left for the airport and Lufthansa flight LH3225 from Prague to Frankfurt.

Uneventful. The bread roll gave me heartburn and the tea was luke-warm.

Frankfurt airport is one of my least favourite places on the planet, and I prefer to route myself through any other European hub if I have the choice. It has been a construction site for as long as I can remember, and it is really a hostile place for flight weary travellers. Give me Schipol or Heathrow any time! Despite the numbing environment, I did part with some money at Frankfurt airport - a blower-brush for my camera lenses, and the tool attachment for my Leatherman "Super Tool" (DM 89.95).

Nothing had changed in two years, and gate B26 was chaotic. The queue was endless, there was one check-in clerk on duty, and German efficiency was nowhere in sight. We boarded flight LH760 and at last were headed for New Delhi, India. The care I had taken back at the Lufthansa agency in Prague paid off, and we had two of the best seats on the flight - row 54, pews B and C...with plenty of packing room between seat B and the window (and no sweaty, garlic-tainted fellow traveller)! It is possible to get Business Class comfort in Economy Class!

Boarding was 15 minutes late and we then stalled for an additional 45 minutes as the luggage of a "no show" traveller had to be removed from the hold, and we lost our slot on the departure grid. I was asleep before we left the ground!

The flight took us to the south of Kiev. The sun faded quickly and Debs and I were intrigued by the vapour trail that we could see forming outside our window on the port side of the aircraft. We always marvel at them from the ground....and now we were part of one - close up. The wine was Rhine Riesling, the food was Hindu, and the music videos were very Indian. I was looking forward to getting back to Nepal!

The in-flight movie was a pleasant surprise - "Wild Wild West" starring William Smith, Kevin Klein and Kenneth Branagh. A big budget movie that flopped in the USA....and now I can understand why. I'm sure that the audience was unable to put the picture into historical context - apparently a taxing exercise for the majority of young Americans ;-) We had two meals - one would have been enough - and too much Italian red wine. I didn't sleep.

We touched down at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport at about 02h00 local time (N 28°33'32.1" E 077°05'11.3"). The temperature was 26 degrees, and it was certainly milder than our last visit here in 1997. It was without a doubt far less humid than it is during monsoon season. It took me five minutes to reorientate myself. The human mind never ceases to amaze me - everything was so familiar, and I would never have said that I was last here over 24 months back.

The luggage appeared on the carousel without a hitch, we exited through the "Green" channel, and stopped at Thomas Cook to change some money. A US$ 100 note bought us Rs 4,270 (there was a service charge of Rs 5). The arrivals section had been remodelled since our last visit, and seemed far quieter than I remember. We left our trolleys and lugged our bags upstairs to the Terminal 2 Visitor's Lounge...our only refuge from the searing heat in 1997! Entry cost us Rs 15 each, and we found a row of black vinyl seats towards the back of the uninspiring hall.

Visitor's Lounge at T-II, New Delhi Airport

With Hindu musicals blaring forth from two television sets we attempted to get some sleep. As exhausted as we were, this was easier said than done. The seats were uncomfortable, our tickets were checked every hour, and we had the adrenaline of being in an exotic country pumping through our systems! When it eventually came, sleep was good. At last, the adventure we had been planning for two years had begun!