There’s No Place Like Home

Fog at the India Gate in New Delhi yesterday. Photo via the Times of India.

Many thanks to y’all for your good thoughts, and Adonai, Ganesha, Garuda, Jesus, Ochun and other divinities–all of whom I invoked with ever-increasing fervor over the last 48 hours. I am back in New York, albeit 30 hours later than scheduled.

The Delhi Disaster–as my family is already calling it–was so dreadful, we’ll surely be laughing about it once we’ve recovered. The Times of India headline when I woke up this morning in Delhi read “Fog Blinds, Paralyses North India.” Not only was visibility bad, the instrument landing systems that are supposed to operate in foggy weather completely failed. The power grid also suffered–the lights and security screeners constantly blinked on and off in the airport as the electricity shorted out and the generators kicked in. Panic, crushing crowds and general clusterfucking ensued. India is not a third-world country, but its capital city’s airport is a poorly maintained, inefficient, overcrowded shithole worthy of a low-tech banana republic. I’ve been in third-world dictatorships with better airports (although oddly, the regional airports I saw in Jaipur and Udaipur were both modern and well-run).

Oh, and while I flew into JFK two hours ago, my luggage is still at Heathrow, despite a four hour layover at the same terminal where my flight from Delhi eventually landed. Thanks British Airways! PhDork joked that BA should have handed out Klonopin lassis, and let me tell you, my ass would have gotten in line twice if they had.

When I was fighting the crowds this morning, a fellow passenger said jokingly, “so aside from this, did you enjoy your trip?” The answer is yes, immensely. So stay tuned…I have a few posts brewing, and a lot of photos to download. And yes, MischiefManager, I’ll be writing about women’s issues, women in India, travelling as a woman in India, etc, at least, with as much insight as I feel I can offer…