The Long, Long, Long Journey Home...Part 1

I'd already booked my flight from Delhi as part of the round the world ticket - and after phoning BA and STA Travel found out it would be more expensive to change it than buy a cheap flight from Colombo to Delhi and catch my original flight.

After breakfast with Nicole and Brock - sadly it was time to say goodbye. I'd been travelling with Brock for almost three months, and running into him on the bus to Leh was one of the best things that happened on my trip. We certainly had a lot of fun...

But it was time to head home. And despite part of me not wanting to go, another part of me was really looking forward to seeing everyone. After a year on the road - I've really come to appreciate having a "home". It's so amazing to know that there's one place in the world where I can always go...

So I headed to the bus and made my way to the airport. It took ages for the bus to finally get there, and I was starting to worry that I was going to miss the flight. But after another long delay at the connecting bus station, I finally made it to the airport with not much time to go, and actually ended up walking through the initial security checks without anyone x-raying my bag...good job really as I had more than the allowed amount of liquids in my bag (contact lens solution in case anyone was wondering).

And then it was on to the flight to Chennai where I enjoyed another free upgrade to business class :-)

Arriving in India was a real experience. And I soon remembered how hard it is to do anything here.

First - I was told to queue in front of a certain desk to get stamped into India. But when I finally made it to the front of the queue - the same guy told me I'd joined the wrong queue. Despite explaining to him that he'd told me to queue there - he was adamant that I was wrong - so I had to join the very long queue at the foreign passports desk...and despite there being several officials sitting around doing nothing they wouldn't let us go to the other free desks.

Then we had to go through the Swine Flu check. They have all these cameras with heat sensors - which is a bit of a joke really as it does feel like just about everyone in India has Swine Flu. They'd probably be better off having the checks for when people leave the country :-)

And then - rather unbelievably - you have to go through security checks to get out of the airport - which includes x-ray and bag searches - even though everyone leaving has just got off an international flight...

...and while I'm ranting: Chennai airport has to be one of the worst in the world. The domestic and international terminals are in the same building - but they make you go out of the building and walk about a quarter of a mile to the other end just to get to the domestic departures. All the while - your being hassled for taxi rides and the like.

And then - they wouldn't let me in to the building because my flight didn't leave for another few hours. In the end I managed to sneak in while the guard was busy checking the tickets of a large group, and hung around in the upstairs bit where all the offices are...so much for all the security...

And then it was on to the flight to Delhi...

I had a few hours to kill at Delhi, and as I had to switch from Domestic to International, I had the same problem of them not letting me in the airport. But in the end, I managed to talk my way in, and had the worst Subway I've ever eaten...

I'd been on the go for 13 hours when I finally boarded the BA flight back to London. But the trip was about to get even worse.

After the departure time had come and gone, we were told that the baggage machine had crashed into the airplane and left some dents which had to be checked out. It was going to take 15 minutes.

More than an hour later, we were told that they had to get London involved and it was going to take another 15 minutes. More than an hour later we were told that Boeing were going to have to get involved and it was going to take 20 minutes.

More than two hours later we were told that everything was OK and we were good to go.

And so we set off.

Now I usually avoid BA having had some bad experiences in the past - and this flight really reminded me why. The chair was really uncomfortable, and the food was terrible. The only thing that made it any good were the excellent cabin crew who tried to keep everyone happy during the flight - despite bearing the brunt of a number of passengers frustrations.

One (small) highlight - I watched a really amazing film called Moon - which I really enjoyed...but apart from that - it was the worst flight of my trip.

Given that we were now more than four hours behind, the plane touched down at Heathrow five minutes before my plane to Manchester was due to leave. So I tried my best to get from terminal 5 to terminal 1 - but it just wasn't going to happen.

So I found the BMI desk, and they were really helpful. They did say BA should have sorted things out, and that BA had a flight I could have easily made if they'd have sorted it all out at T5. But they did book me on their next available flight - which was going to leave 5 hours later.

So I hung around the new and improved T1. I was glad to see that it's been done up - Heathrow used to be my least favourite airport in the world - but it's really good these days.

Fish and chips, too much coffee, and some work on the blog, and I finally made it onto the plane.

BMI domestic flights are really good - and it's only an hour so it wasn't too bad. Oh - and it didn't seem too cold in the UK - the one thing I wasn't really looking forward to.