Idiot Boy

It is official. Many of you probably already know this, but I am a tool! It's like I actually set out to make life difficult for myself, and I'm not even talking about the cycling aspect of this trip. No, that can wait for a bit, I overcomplicate issues just getting out to India.

You'd have thought that I would have learnt from my swift departure from Dublin. Sitting on the computer, trying to find my airline receipt, when I finally decide to actually check the time of my ferry and find out that far from it leaving at 11.30 as I had thought, it was actually 11.10 - this was at the prepared time of 10.15, giving me just 25min to get my panniers on my bike (yes, there weren't even there yet!), hop aboard, pedal the 3 miles down to Dun Laoghaire, say goodbye to mum and Eoin, and check in. I did make it, but there wasn't much standing around.

So, when I finally did manage to get my hands on my e-ticket and see that my plane left at 09.45, you might just think that I'd have the sense to check it. You would, of course, be wrong. Why check it when it's right there in front of you? Why indeed.

I was a little disconcerted and flummexed to see on arrival at the airport that there was no 09.45 plane to Delhi - only an 08.45 one...that was now closed. But no worries, things work out - they always do. So I found myself on the 10am plane to Mumbai, with a link to Delhi the following morning. Sorted.

Unfortunately, things are never that easy in my life, so I found myself standing at the carasoull at 2am watching the same 3 bags go round, and round, and round, and round. My box, and of course, my bike inside, was nowhere to be found. It was about now that I started to curse my lacadaisacal attitude towards getting travel insurance. I meant to get, I really did, it just seemed to take a bit of a back seat to all my other "preparations". But, as it turned out, after a brief altercation with the friendly Air India staff, another trailer of cargo from flight AI124 was found and there appeared my box (I was luckier than other people on that flight).

From here I then discovered from my guardian angel Max (a guy from North India, working in LA, who missed the 08.45 plane because he was pissed and so was making the same route as me) that far from the 05.40 plane being direct to Delhi, it stopped off at about 3 other locations before landing in Delhi, so we (there was actually about 6 of us making the same trip) all stood in queue for about an hour and a half, being pushed out of the way by other desperate (more pushy) travellers. Until finally, at 05.45 we secured seats on the 06.00 flight to Delhi. Of course, we still had to check in our bags and clear security, but I'd grown more confident in my queue-jumping abilities, so just strode to the front of the line, went through the metal detector, ran down to the gate and managed to pass through the gates at 05.58.

The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful: fell asleep, almost left my passport on the plane (my neighbour pointed out that it was on the ground), you know the normal kind of flight. So now, 11hrs after I should have arrived, I'm finally here. And so, after all that, do you know who I blame for all of this? Those damned lazy farmers. It was them and their daylight saving malarky that created this fiasco.

Nothing to do with me...