My India Journal part 2 of 8

We landed at JFK and everyone on the plane had to deboard. I thought, “Oh, well. It was really nice getting to ride up there for that last flight. Now we’ll be put back in Coach where we really belong.” All of us emptied into a large gate area, and people began to stand in line to have their Indian travel visas checked. Since we again didn’t know if we had seats on this flight, we had a seat and began the whole screen watching ritual. One announcement that they kept making was that the flight was entirely full, and that there would be no seat changes. People went up and begged and pleaded, but to no avail. That made me nervous. We tried to stay encouraged and thought that at least we might be able to see Byron’s brother, his wife, and their new baby if we ended up staying another day in the States. Finally they called all of the stand bys to the back of the loading area and began to print out boarding passes for all of us! Wahoo! When I got mine, I looked at the row, and it was NUMBER 2! First Class! We turned LEFT when we got on the plane! That’s when I KNEW for certain that God did in fact have a sense of humor! J The first thing we did was tell the flight attendant that yes, we would like a pre-flight beverage (orange juice). We settled in and looked through the menu to decide what we’d like for our 5 course meal. This was the first flight where it was either Veg or Non-Veg for each course. I chose all Non-Veg because I thought the Veg might be too spicy for me and I wasn’t ready to tackle that just yet. We had our dinner, complete with hot cloth to wash our hands/face with, tablecloth on our tray table, china plate, glass glasses, and real silverware. The first course (snack) was a dish of nuts, and there wasn’t a peanut among them. Plus, they were toasted and still warm! Then the bread/salad course – pistachio bread and a salad mix with no iceberg lettuce. The other courses included a fabulous crab cake and a chocolate brownie that was amazing! Then the captain announced that the turbulence was getting too bad for the flight attendants to be out of their seats, so they suspended cabin service for a while. I took advantage of that time to get to sleep. I probably slept for a couple of hours and when I woke up the turbulence was gone. When I looked out the window, I could actually see “the curvature of the earth” (Reba fans might recognize that one). It was evidently overcast on the ground, but above the clouds, we could still see the lights of the bigger cities through the clouds. To me, it looked like Christmas lights hidden under a blanket of snow. It was beautiful! We continued with our meal and started to watch movies and such. The seat FULLY reclined and even had a foot rest that extended out! Can you imagine??? There was also a red goody bag with a toothbrush/paste, lotion, earplugs, tissue, and a sleeping mask in it for each seat. The headphones were real ones – not the plastic instruments of torture that I usually get on a plane. These had padded earpieces and looked like huge earmuffs. One interesting fact (or at least it was to me) was that we flew around Iraq instead of taking the most direct route over Iraqi airspace. Fine by me! I don’t want to be caught in their airspace at all! It was on the plane that we experienced December 17th. We took off on Dec 16 at around 10:00 pm and we got to Mumbai, India, at about 11:30 pm on the 17th. By the time we got off the plane, it was after midnight. As we were coming in to the airport, the lights in the city began to get more and more distinct. I don’t know exactly what caused it, I’m assuming trees, but the lights twinkled! It looked so cute! It was like the whole city had decorated for Christmas. We landed on the tarmac and taxied to the place where we could get on the shuttle bus to take us to the airport. As we were driving along, I saw dogs running around with the workers at the airport! I thought, “Any country that would let dogs stick around the people working at the airport can’t be all bad!” Isn’t that silly, that dogs would make me feel more at ease?