I looked down at my pack, my life for the next 8 months, sitting there amongst all the junk sprawled across my room, all the needless crap I had accumulated over the years. I remembered countless house moves where I’d boxed it all up and carted it to my next place where it would gather dust until the next move came and I’d do it all again. I remember how sure I was that I needed it all, that at some point I would need the cable from some long lost electronic device, the seven screwdriver sets, the library of ancient PC games good for nothing but nostalgia. And now I had everything in a backpack. To peel off all the layers to find the essentials, the things that I required to live and to live contentedly; it felt surprisingly rejuvenating. So basically, I now have diddly squat and am off to see the world! Or some of it at least.
We flew out with Jet Airways, an Indian company who provide pretty decent value and a banging in flight meal (although the queue for the toilet that followed was a right pain in the ass). Naturally, being the two worry warts that we are, we arrived at the airport ridiculously early. Having squeezed our lives into one bag each, we had of course forgotten some various necessities so a trip around duty free ensued. Duty free used to be da bomb when I was kid, all the good stuff, for less. World Duty Free’s slogan is “More than you imagined...” God damn right it is, more than it fucking costs anywhere else. But maybe this was always the case but all that has changed is that I pay for stuff now and not my dad.
Our shopping spree complete, we headed for the lounge. Because that is the kind of hardcore backpackers we are, ones fuelled by an open bar and a sickening number of cute little bacon rolls (seriously, these are the best). Sinead’s dad, being the insanely big-hearted dude that he is, as well as a regular flyer, hooked us up with the lounge access, which was, admittedly, wonderful. And definitely the right way to fly. But as I sat there reading a magazine while Sinead got a facial, I did wonder whether this fitted in with the whole, grand world tour, to be pushed out of my comfy little world of habitual routine, to experience the unknown, to get lost, to be an adventurer! I consoled myself, over a generous gin and tonic, that there would be plenty of time for all that nonsense later and right now I should just enjoy moment and the fortune bestowed upon it.
.jpg)
This fortune naturally refers to incredible people watching in an airport lounge. Seriously, airports attract all sorts and the lounge condenses the weird and wonderful into area for your viewing pleasure. It’s like a zoo for the strange; you have the two business men travelling together who decide it wise to sit at either ends of the long, ten person table and proceed to have a conversation with each other; the crazy dude who wont stop eating oranges, he literally left a small mountain of orange peel on his table, the waitress looked a little startled; the old man who has to choose the table furthest from the flight screens and then proceed to spend the next hour walking to and from his table to check for his flight gate; the man who is constantly adjusting his belt in a rather ostentatious fashion; a group of ra-ra teen girls on their way to Ibiza or Magaluf, all trying to vie for the position of most obtuse; and the family with a Dad who looked like he would not give two shits if the rest of them dropped down dead. It’s just fascinating. And unlike a normal zoo, the old ushers itself out and the new enters in a regular cycle.
We boarded our flight without a hitch and remarkably, on time. Apparently Jet Airways have a fantastic reputation for being punctual, something that cannot be said for many other airlines. I had worried a little that our bags would exceed our allotted cabin baggage size and weight allowance, but these fears proved, as everyone had told me, unfounded. There was a guy there with a full on suitcase, an oldschool carpet-style one, fruitlessly attempting to fit it into the overhead lockers. I had only been on one other long haul flight (aka a flight with a tv!) and that was over ten years ago, so I instantly set out to play with the tv and boy was it worth it; it had games! I played Scorpion Racer, an unbelievably awful topdown racing game where you race down a straight road for what was apparently five “laps”. I set the highscore for the flight. No biggy. But I owned that plane! Owned it! After this, we settled down to enjoy a movie, and since Sinead and I are cute like that, we watched the same movie in sync, pausing it in sync for toilet breaks etc. And it was a good movie: The Secret Life of Pets. I don’t remember hearing much about it but I was impressed. Kevin Hart voices a crazy, revolutionist bunny called ‘Snowball’ (“Death's coming to Brooklyn, and he's got buck teeth and a cottontail!”). How can you not want to watch that?!
Sinead decided to sleep, aka spending the next hour wriggling around trying to get comfy, while I watched the latest X-Men movie (Apocalypse...?). It was pretty terrible. Magneto was pretty badass, as per usual, and the new villain, Apocalypse (?) seemed like he might have had potential (although judging by how he chose his useless sidekicks, maybe he didn’t) but the rest... Someone described it to me as like a comic book series. A series of scenes that jump from high-octane, excessive action to subplot as dull as it is obvious. Should have spent the hour and a half wriggling.
We touched down in Delhi a little over eight hours later for a layover. Where Sinead reminded me why the flight was such good value. A thirteen hour layover. What do you do for thirteen hours in an airport I hear you ask? You queue. Forever. To get through Delhi’s haphazard security. By haphazard I mean they seem to randomly confiscate items and spend an excessive amount of time discussing the fact that the metal detector isn’t working before finding the plug kicked out (how long it has been unplugged we shall never know, nor how many knives flew out of Delhi that day). And then what do you do? Go to the lounge of course!
We had a pretty magical, hot noodle soup that blew my brains out and discovered an awesome new gin called Blue Moon, which allayed my doubts about how ‘travelling’ and chilling in the comfort of a lounge could be one since I was suffering in comfort and discovering a new variation of an old favourite! And apparently I can justify anything to myself.
After eleven hours, and learning a thousand different ways to sit in the same chair, we headed for our connecting flight to Bangkok. It was weird, as we walked to our gate there were just so many old people being pushed around in wheelchairs. There was no significance to that observation, I just didn’t have anything else to say. We left Delhi for a pretty turbulent flight, tracked by lightning the whole way, to Bangkok. When we arrived, the Captain did his customary thank you for flying with Jet Airways message, tried to sell us a few things then finished with the current weather: 27 degrees Celsius. At 5am. Fuck.