The Art of Waiting

The last two days have been a study in waiting. Helen and I left our house in Hazaribag just after 8:00 pm on Saturday evening, and we will arrive at our final destination (or so we hope) around 8:30 pm tonight, Monday night.

Sunday we spent most of the day at that Spanish cafe. I mentioned breakfast already (and here's evidence!).

The second picture is Helen enjoying her first cappuccino in about a month. We also had lunch, an afternoon snack, and dinner there. There was a cute boutique next door, so we got some gift shopping done, too. One of the servers at the cafe seems to have a mental impairment, and he speaks no English, but I guess he developed crushes on Helen and me? By the end, he would purposefully grab our hands if we handed him order slips, and he would give us little notes (written in Hindi) and he followed Helen to the bathroom a few times. Generally, he was making us pretty uncomfortable.

After we finished dinner, we paid for all of our meals and snacks and drinks and internet from the day (which came out to about $11 for each of us). We took a taxi ($8) the 40 mins to the airport. Then we found out they wouldn't let us into the ticketing area to wait for our flight until midnight (the flight was 6 am the next morning, but we didn't want to get a hotel just to leave at 3 in the morning). We watched two movies, One Day which was mediocre and The Intouchables, a French film that was fantastic! It may be one of my new favorite movies. You should check it out if you get the chance.

We finally got into the main ticketing area, and then we had to wait for 3:30 to actually get our boarding passes and check our bags. At this point we hadn't truly slept in far too long (Saturday night on the bus doesn't count for much, and Friday night we got back late from Bodh Gaya), the airport was freezing and drafty, and they were playing incredibly repetitive and generic Indian music. Plus, there was nowhere comfortable to sit, no businesses (restaurants, cafes, whatever) in the airport, and too many grumpy people. We couldn't really sleep, we were getting hungry, we were freezing, and we were increasingly annoyed about everything.

We finally got to sleep when we were at the gate for a few hours and found a comfy chair. We both slept a fair amount on the plane. We arrived in Mumbai and found some wide chairs without armrests that we were able to scoot together to make little benches to lie down on, and we slept a good amount here. I just discovered the free wifi, which is great, but there aren't a lot of outlets around and my computer is sapped from the movies in Kolkata. I'm charging now while Helen sleeps--we had to get sketchy fried Indian chicken/potato (??) burgers, and it looks like Helen's made her sick. I think it should pass by the time we have to board our next flight at 5:30 or so. After this next flight, Helen's friend should meet us that the airport in Kochi and take us to some sort of lodging, where we can freshen up and nap and have dinner or whatever.

I'm looking forward to getting back in motion. I'm really struggling to keep myself from getting angsty about all this sitting around.

Oh! And today is 8 weeks since I left the U.S., 2 weeks to go. When I get back to Hazaribag on Monday morning, there will be 1 week. And then all sorts of new and fun things will begin.