Back to Chennai - 18 October

2:30 am = OH! MY! GOD! My alarm clock went off at that hour and the pain that the sound inflicted was intense. I had gotten three hours of sleep and I definitely needed more! We were getting the 4:30 train back to Delhi and needed to be out of the hotel by 3:30 to make sure we got there on time. As the leader I needed to be in the lobby by 3:15 to check students as they came down to the lobby. The agony!

Unfortunately, many of the students had decided that going to bed last night was a waste of time so they stayed up and partied. It turns out that the majority of them went to bed at some point and didn’t get up in time to be in the lobby by 3:30. Jessica and I had to make many phone calls to the rooms even though they all had wake-up calls. By 3:50 we had all but 3 students loaded onto the buses and made the decision to leave them behind so that the rest of us wouldn’t miss the train (they had been warned that this was a consequence of not being someplace at the agreed upon time so I only felt mildly guilty that I was leaving them there). We got to the train station with a few minutes to spare. All of sudden there was a flurry of activity when the three missing students showed up. They had rushed down to the lobby several minutes after we had left and had gotten a taxi to the station. They were three lucky students because we were heading all the way back to Chennai today which included the train trip and the plane trip. If they hadn’t gotten to the station in the morning they would have been handling their own travel arrangements.

Once on the train we discovered that we had sleeping berths for the six hour trip to Delhi. Given the gawd awful hour that we had gotten up, this was greeted with great joy and relief. We quickly settled into our respective beds and some much needed sleep.

Six hours later we pulled into the Delhi train station and eventually made our way to the buses after the tour guides finally figured out where they were located. As we drove through the city, the tour guide told us there are two parts to the city – Old Delhi and New Delhi. Old Delhi was dirty, crowded and chaotic. New Delhi was clean, much less crowded and organized. It was odd to experience. We drove past the Parliament House, Indira Gandhi’s memorial, Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial, and other notable places. Unfortunately, we didn’t stop at any of them due to time constraints. However, we made a 15 minute stop to visit the place where Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated. It’s time to just go with the flow again. However, I feel compelled to share the experience with you so here is a picture of the path he took (notice the footprints) before being shot (the small pagoda with the marker in the distance). Now you too have experienced Gandhi’s last moments.

Back on the bus and into the traffic for another hour before we reached the restaurant for lunch. Given that it was 1:00 pm and we hadn’t eaten since 3:30 am we were a bit hungry. Another quick lunch and we were hustled onto the bus to visit the Baha’i Temple which was built in 1986 and shaped like a lotus blossom. We were given 10 minutes to go inside and see the interior. I had had enough by this time and contented myself with some exterior shots and went back to the bus.

Back on the bus, we drove for a couple of hours before reaching the airport for our 5:30 flight back to Chennai. Right about the time we pulled into the airport area, one of the students sitting in back of me tapped me on the shoulder and told me that her passport was on a bus we used yesterday in Jaipur. When we made the stop at the market, she had tucked her passport between the seats for safe keeping and then forgot about it when she got back on the bus. Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh! I informed the tour guide of the problem and he looked incredulous that anyone could be that stupid and then frantically started making phone calls to his supervisors to see if the bus could be tracked down and searched.

We went into the airport and I was greeted by the regional supervisor for the tourist agency handling our trip. He quickly took our tickets and went to get our boarding passes. We were cutting it rather close with the time since it was about 4:45 and the plane would soon start boarding. We hung out in the waiting area for about 20 minutes and used the time to contact the Dean on duty on the ship about the passport situation. We heard the call for boarding our plane but the supervisor hadn’t returned with our tickets yet. He finally reappeared with an airline representative whose job it was to hustle our sorry selves through security and out to the gate, poor man. Security was the typically slow process. I was at the end of the line and when I came through the airline agent looked frantic and informed me that despite our tight deadline to get to the plane some of our students were standing at the McDonald’s counter buying food. Aaaaarrrrrrgggghhh! I quickly ran over to them and told them to get their butts moving and to get to the gate immediately. I must have had a ferocious expression on my face because they moved. I certainly felt ferocious at that point.

We made it to the plane with three minutes to spare. We hadn’t even settled into our seats when the plane started to move and then sat on the tarmac for 20 minutes waiting for clearance. This wasn’t good for one big reason – we only had 40 minutes to change planes in Bangalore. Sure enough, when we landed in Bangalore, our connecting plane was due to leave in 20 minutes. Fortunately, we were on a very efficient airline and once the officials learned that 65 people on this plane needed one that was loading, they had the buses take us directly to that plane rather than to the terminal. Thank goodness because if we had missed the connection I would have had a total meltdown since it was the last flight to Chennai of the day. The students must have figured out that I was totally stressed out because they were incredibly nice to me and offered to help out however they could. It certainly restored my faith in them after the passport and McDonalds incidents.

We landed in Chennai at 9:30 and were greeted by another agent from the travel agency. We quickly walked (stampeded) out to the buses and were soon on our way back to the ship. It took us an hour to get there and everyone was keeping an eye out for other Semester at Sea buses along the way because two large groups were due to return to the ship at the same time. This translates into a long wait to get onto the ship since they check all bags and luggage as we board the ship (contraband, dontcha know). Thankfully, we had a speed demon for a bus driver and we beat out four buses to the dock although one had arrived ahead of us. It only took us ten minutes to get through the line and onto the ship and then everyone scattered like cockroaches to get to their rooms and jump into the shower. We were supposed to be conserving water while in port in India but we were so filthy that to conserve water at that point would have been a crime against humanity – my humanity, in particular.

But before jumping into the shower and going to bed, I took a few minutes to e-mail my family to let them know that I was still alive and safe. After that, I sprinted back to my cabin, showered, and dove into bed as fast as I could. It had been a very long day!