The Curse of Air India strikes again...!

Flying... it's one of those things that you either love or hate. I love it personally. The thrill of taking off, the lurching in the stomach when you hit turbulance and drop like a stone for a few hundred feet, watching the world drift by from 10,000 ft, flying above the clouds in awe of the patterns they produce, the shimmer of the sun on the glittering sea - quite frankly I think it's amazing.

I'm not too keen on the landings though, it gives me the willies when those wheels impact themselves into the tarmac and you finally touch down and the world is hurtling so fast a pace past your little window that it's just a blur, and you try to convince yourself that it's OK, the pilot knows his stuff, that the handbrakes will work and the reverse thrust on those engines will kick in in time...

...and no matter how hard you try to convince yourself of this, there's that niggling thought in the back of your mind that there's no way the runway is long enough for you to stop in time, or that that lurching from left to rightas you're carreering down the runway means that the whole vehicle is so close to flipping over... no... landings... I'm not that keen on them... but as for the rest of the flying experience I really enjoy it.

Which brings me on to airports. Are there any interesting airports in the world? Why are they so dull and uncomfortable? And why do the announcers all sound like they need their adenoids sorting out?

We spent a whole night in Thiruvananthapurum airport the other night. Having failed in our quest to train it up the west coast to Goa (no tickets available due to the "Goa Carnival" - something akin to mardi gras it seems and we're kicking ourselves we missed it) we had to make do with flying back to Mumbai - we organised the tickets a week or so ago, and the only ones we could get meant a very early departure - as in a 4am flight! Which meant a 1.30am check in... but due to the taxis/rickshaw wallahs at kovalam refusing to take us (to the airport) any later than midnight we opted to head over to the airport a lot earlier - like 8pm the previous day. Only when we got there the guards wouldn't let us into the airport until 3 hours before our flight... nice... but the airport manager took kindly to us and graced us by allowing us in to stay on the 'comfy' chairs in the check in lounge...

That's when the curse of air india struck... and for sarah and I it wasn't the first time as we spent a night in an aircraft on the tarmac of delhi airport a few years back waiting for clearance... but that's by the by... at least this time we weren't in the plane... so yeah, you guessed it, the flight was delayed... instead of leaving at 4am... it was now rescheduled to leave at 9am... curses - which meant in retrospect we could have stayed at our hotel and not left till early morning... as it was it was getting on for midnight and we had a whole night ahead of us in the check in lounge... as tony the say's (without any sense of sarcasm mind)... grrrrrrrrRRREAT!!

As it happens it wasn't too bad... we managed to get some sleep. And when the flight eventually left (a little later than [re] sheduled) the flight was fine. We landed in Mumbai close to lunchtime and made it to Uncle Bulbuls for about 2pm. We washed, slept, woke in the early evening, played cards, drank G+T's, ate snacks followed by our evening meal and then went to bed once more around 11pm... the flight up to Delhi and Chandigarh being due to depart the following day early.

The flight in was amazing... the view from the air of the himalaya's as we were flying in tp Chandigarh was breathtaking... such a clear view of the snow capped peaks!

So we're finally here in Chandigarh at Sarah's grandparents (and parents) home. It's so great to be back and good to see everyone. Time to kick back and let our stung wallets let off some steam.

It's a lot cooler in the north, I'm actually wearing my fleece! something unimaginable a day or so back... but then when you consider we've travelled the equivalent of say, coming from gibralta in southern spain to somewhere like leeds or bradford, it's not really surprising the difference in climate... albeit a lot further south in general... chandigarh is at a similar longitude to say jerusalem, or cairo...

So, we're 3 weeks in. and all three of us have had that flu and are still recovering - can't shake that cough... we're gonna kick back here and recouporate for a few weeks here... next week though we're heading up into the mountains for few days, firstly to check out a painting I did of Uncle Gurbux's home in the hills in a village called Mashobra... it's on situ in the said home and I'm keen to see it on the wall... we'll stay overnight in Shimla (the old colonial capital during the Raj when those pesky british that took over the land here years ago went to when they couldn't take the summer heat in Delhi... bunch of wimps!)

So, until next time... keep those messages coming in people... Oh, and thanks for you kind offer Jo... I'll email you an address soon.

x :)