a long, long way

It’s fitting I guess. If you’re going to a place that’s as culturally different as India it should take a long time to get there. Right now it’s that moment on the plane when you have to decide which timezone you want to exist in. Our fourteen hour flight is about halfway done. The cabin is full of sleeping people, lights are out and the outside air temperature is -70F. Newark time is 3am. Delhi time is 12:30 in the afternoon.
I’m going for Delhi time. I slept the first half, now I’ll try to be awake until we land at 8pm in hopes of avoiding jet lag. Hmmmm. We’ll see.
At least I was able to sleep. No thanks to the ambien that I asked Marci for. About twenty minutes after I took it on a full stomach I started to feel funny. Then queasy. Then full out nauseous. Then, uh oh, no bag in my seat pocket! Instead a frantic slalom course around passengers getting items which had shifted while in the overhead and flight attendants trying to pour cocktails. Yes I made it to the vacant lavatory. Just. They say you get sick in India, not on the way!
All that exercise must have made me tired because then I slept like a baby until noon.
The airline cabin looks a bit like they moved a bunch of dentists chairs into an orphanage. Dimly lit, stretched out chairs with various forms of fetal positioned blanket lumps and odd noises. Every so often the headmaster strolls the aisles looking critically at each navy blue mass with hair. The orphanage has periodic little earthquakes but none of us seem to mind. We all know we’ll be united with Mother India soon enough. Soon enough.
Just a short addition…as we flew over Afghanistan toward Delhi it was sunset with thick cloud cover. What seemed like not to far away were mountain peaks poking up above the clouds. As I gazed and thought about how beautiful it was, I began to see flashes on the mountain sides. My first thought was the plane’s flashing lights bouncing off the land. But the flashes were irregular and some dim and others quite bright. Then I thought about where we were and my heart sunk as I realized what I was seeing was probably the distant sights of war. How thankful we are that men and women volunteer to put themselves there so we can fly peacefully, and safely, by. It gives much more meaning to how lucky we are to have the opportunity for this trip.