My India Journal part 6 of 8

Anyway, we entered the airport with our boarding passes and sat down to have a wait for a LONG time for our next flight. It was about an 8 hour wait. During that time, I hit the wall. All of the traveling and lack of sleep and “normal” food caught up with me and I thought I was going to be ill. I could NOT keep my eyes open, no matter what I tried. We bought bottled sodas for the caffeine, but that didn’t do any good, either. Somehow, we made it through that wait. It had to have been the grace of God, because I was so ill, I don’t even remember most of the wait, I’m sure. They finally called our flight and we got on the bus to go out to the plane. When we got on, I fell asleep before they did the safety instruction demonstration and almost slept through supper. That was a pretty short flight for me! J I felt a little better, but not even close to 100%. We landed in Kolkata around 11:05 pm on Tuesday evening. After we reclaimed our luggage, which made it safely through, we got a prepaid taxi to the hotel. Outside the airport, a man asked me if we wanted the pre-paid taxi line. We said yes, so he began to lead us there. He helped to load our luggage in the trunk, and then turned to Byron for a tip. Byron handed him 20 rupees, and the guy said, “No, I am the porter. I carried your bags (which means he shoved Byron out of the way and pushed the cart). You have many bags. You owe me 100 rupees.” Byron stood his ground and offered him 20, but the guy was also insistent. After so many hours of traveling and being so exhausted, that was just the last straw. Byron was NOT going to give in! He kept saying, “You didn’t tell me that you were the porter! I didn’t ask you to push the cart! No! 20 rupees or nothing!” The whole thing ended by Byron shoving the money at him out the open window as the taxi driver pulled away. I hated that it ended like that, but at that point, he was lucky to have gotten anything. The driver had to stop several times for directions to the street where our hotel was, which by now I had figured out was just the way things are in this country, and even stopped for gas. It was 1:00 am when we were at the gas station. Finally he found the hotel and we were able to check in. By the way, as far as luggage, we had 4 really big roller suitcases and 2 backpacks. That was WAY too much luggage for a regular taxi! They had to tie the trunk closed with rags to get it all in! We went into the hotel, which was nice – Motel 6ish. The best part about it was that it was quiet. There was no honking, no loud people, no noise. The walls between the rooms must have been made of something soundproof because we never heard a peep from anyone else. The not-so-nice part was that in their advertising, they mentioned that each room had a room safe and offered complimentary bottled water. We got up to the room and there was no room safe and no bottled water. There was a little mini fridge, but it hadn’t been turned on for very long and nothing was cold at all. It only had 2 bags of chips, a bottle of club soda, and a bottle of Sprite in it anyway. We called down and asked for the complimentary bottled water and they asked if we wanted it chilled or not chilled. We asked for 4 chilled bottles, and the room service guy brought them right up. Then he said, “That will be 84 rupees, please.” So much for complimentary! We wanted to get up kind of early the next day, so we set our alarms for 9:00 am (yes, that WAS early!) and fell off to sleep at last. At 8:00 am, our friends from Nepal called and said that they were in a hotel not too far from us, and did we want to meet them for breakfast at Flurrie’s. Well, yes! We started out and met Bruce coming to get us. This was the first time I really got to see the streets of Kolkata. The whole place reminded me of the places we’ve been in Mexico and Honduras. The poverty, the griminess, the pushiness, everything, felt familiar in a way. The only thing different was the smell, I guess because of the incense and spices. The people even looked familiar because of their coloring. I had the urge to speak Spanish to them! J