Traveling

10 January. In the back of a rusty bus, on the way to a run-down hotel, at the expense of Air India, I squinted through the smeared windows to see the moving shadows of Delhi at midnight. Thankful for the warmth of the fat lady seated next to me in the bus crowded with delayed passengers, I began to realize that this was all a great adventure...

3 weeks earlier. Term 1 at AUW had come to a halting finish and my grades were submitted. Not wanting to waste a moment of the 3 week break, I took a fourteen hour night bus to Rajshahi (my parents' future home) to stay with dear friends. I hadn't realized until reaching that northern province that Bangladeshi winters would indeed call for wool socks and heavy layers. After a precious few days in Rajshahi, then Bogra, baking Swedish cookies with my Auntie Karin, I then took the bus to Dhaka, ready to depart on 21 December for Christmas in the States.

I hadn't received any reply from my delinquent online travel agent as to my exact itinerary (since some changes had been made by airlines), so in Dhaka I finally tracked down my updated itinerary to discover my Kuwait Airways flight had departed the Dhaka runway on the previous day. Thus began an exhausting saga of trips to the airport, tears, trips to airline offices, and more tears; but also a merciful shower of phone calls and reassuring advice from supportive friends all over Bangladesh. Although by the end of it all, I'd come down with a good case of laryngitis, I wanted nothing more than to croak words of gratitude to friends and family. And apart from the traffic, Dhaka turned out to be a fine place to be stuck, especially with presence of good company and the rosewater footbaths of Bengali beauty parlors.

23 December. I finally boarded the flight to Kuwait City, where I spent the night in a shiny Sheraton Four Points with another Dhaka-NY passenger, named Ruby. A middle-aged, Pakistani-Bengali Muslim with short dyed hair, dark clothes, and passionate about German Gothic music and the Tampa night life, Ruby couldn't have been more my opposite. Yet together we happily passed the evening admiring this prime example of the Middle East's economic boom, and savouring the incredible menu of the hotel's restuarant - all with Kuwait Airways footing the bill. And we watched the sun rise over this desert city as we taxied back to the airport.

The next day's fourteen hour flight landed me in New York City on Christmas Eve. At JFK my first American embrace was with Eunice Lee - a sister since my Thailand days - who met me at the exact same meeting point where she'd come four and a half months ago to see me off to Bangladesh. We wondered out to the curb to wait for my brothers, driving up from DC on the way up to Maine for Christmas. While shivering and chatting with Eunice, I was suddenly lifted off the ground by my two brothers who'd made their welcoming attack from behind. Then arriving in Maine at midnight on the Eve. Invaluable time with family. Another blog post.

From Maine, onto Chicago, where I attended my college roommate's wedding and all in all had an incredible time of reunion and reminiscing.

6 January. I showed up at Chicago O'Hare to board my Air India flight direct to Delhi, then Kolkata, then to Dhaka, so that I could reach Chittagong by 9 January - the first day of Term 2. Although I'd been warned about flying through India without an Indian visa, I'd given up on trying to obtain an Indian visa during my short time home. And that fateful write-off led to the floodgate of tears being released when I was told that I could not check on to my flight without an Indian visa. Although the tears were neat little bookends to my story of travel mishaps, I have to say they didn't last as long this time, despite the steep rebooking fees being hard to swallow. However, at this point, I'd not only began to expect turbulence, but I also couldn't help rejoice over the blessing of a few more days with lovely Elise, Christy, and Meghan in the home where I'd spent my last year in Wheaton.

I stole moments with these friends in between multiple train commutes to and from the Indian visa office on State Street, Chicago. When they turned me away on Friday, before my Sunday morning flight, I begged for a way to get the visa on Saturday even though the office would be closed. "Can't I go to the Consulate directly?" I asked.

The lady behind the glass window at Travisa Outsourcing frowned, then winked at me while shaking her head and saying, "I can't advise you to go to the Consulate.... but their office will be open tomorrow."

So Elise and I took our last sunny drive into the windy city on Saturday morning, where a two hour wait resulted in a reclaimed passport set with a 10 year multiple entry tourist visa to India. We celebrated with lunch and espresso at Julius Meinl, the marvelous Austrian cafe where I purchased a final pound of whole bean coffee to add to the 6 lbs stash accompanying me to Bangladesh. (I'm not sure when I'll be back in a coffee country... better safe than sorry.)

The rest in a nutshell. Checked into Air India; flight delayed 6 hours; missed connection to Kolkata; spent 3 hours in the same Delhi hotel where British Airways put my family in 1995; missed my Kolkata to Dhaka flight; Air India's Kolkata branch manager asked me, "Why are you weeping?" .... Why indeed? Bought a new ticket with Biman airline to Dhaka; slept a solid 12 hours in Dhaka; woke up, hopped a CNG that crawled through Dhaka to the bus neighborhood; paid $4 for bumpy and scenic seven hour bus ride home to Chittagong.