Lost in Transit...

So when I left you on the last post I was in the arrivals lounge in Delhi airport, unsure of my fate.

Well, now I am writing from the comfort of my bed in Kathmandu, but lots of stuff happened between the two states...

First of all the airport security agreed that I could fy on to Kathmandu... but I would have to wait for the next day as all of the flights that day were full... I agreed to this seeming to have little choice in the matter. There was still the little issue of how I was to pay for the flights, as their machines still refused to take my visa debit cards, and the only atms were on the wrong side of all of the security...

So I was taken up to the transit lounge, which wasn't a very luxurious place. It basically consisted of a lot of sun lounger type chairs, or 3 more upmarket type places where you could pay extra to stay for a few hours... I managed to get one of them down to 4500 Rupees to allow me to stay for as long as it took for my flight to come (this was complicated by the fact that I didn't actually have a ticket yet...) Even after this there was the small matter of having to pay them, as I still had no rupees. We got round this by the manager of the lounge basically smuggling me past security, I think possibly by promising them free drinks.

So here I was... at last, actually in India... I briefly considered the option of doing a run for it, but without my passport, and most of my possesions I didn't think i would last long. I was never really cut out for a life on the run.

Five minutes later I was back behind the security cordon, proud owner of 6000 rupees. If I'd had my wits about me I would probably thought to get the money I needed for the flight as well, but then things probably wouldn't have turned out so nice as they did...

I was back in the transit lounge, trying to make myself comfortable, availing myself of the free food and drink. Every so often the airport staff would come to find me, and we would make another effort for me to pay for my plane ticket. This incidentally included an effort by them to get me past security again. However all the efforts of two airport employees couldn't do what some lowly waiter in the transit lounge had managed to do a mere hour earlier... Interesting eh?

Anyway, back in the transit lounge I had just discovered that the internet didn't work (which was one of the main reasons I had agreed to pay the price) when the airport staff rushed over to me, slapped a ticket on the table and said, "you have to board now, this flight leaves in 10 minutes!!".

I quickly gathered all of my things together and ran after them, through the security that led to the departure lounge, through all the duty free, back up to the security so that they would give my bag a tag to prove that it had been checked (security in India is a bit anal like that), and finally to the boarding area where I was bussed, along with some other passengers, to the plane.

It was only when I sat down that I realised that they hadn't asked me to pay a penny for my flight ticket...

You may think that the story is over now, but there is still the adventures that occured once that I arrived in Kathmandu... I'll leave that for another post...