India: Day One – Getting There

The plan had been to knock out a blog a day, but until now I’ve not managed to string much time together to write anything. It is our fourth day in India, and it has been an intense jumble of jetlag (5.5 hours ahead of the UK), crazy car rides and activities.

My posts, therefore, may come out a few at a time or not at all depending on my windows of opportunity, but I feel I need to note what I can down. I last came here in 2003 when my mum and dad were still alive, and although I remember snippets, I didn’t keep any kind of a diary, and there is so much that I’ve forgotten.

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Having not flown at all since 2019, I was a little bit nervous of getting to Mumbai in the first place. I had read that air turbulence was increasing because of climate change, and I wondered if I needed to get my affairs in order, or at least keep some sea-sickness tablets handy.

There were a few moments of shakiness, but nothing that required a sickbag, which no longer appeared to be in the seat pocket in front of me. I was sitting on the same row as a child from hell who screamed blue murder every time he was lifted off the aisle floor so that the steward trolleys could get past. There seemed to a lot of children with us at the back of the mahoosive Airbus A380, but all the others were fine. Yes, this child could have had needs that were invisible to me. Yes, being couped up for seven hours in a tiny space is seriously no fun at all. Yes, I should be more thoughtful, as flying can be quite painful, especially in a child’s ears when the air pressure changes. My ears were definitely in pain. I suppose his meltdowns were a distraction from my flight fears, as by the end, although the plane seemed to land a little roughly, I had quite lost my worries. 

Dubai Airport is long. Our connecting flight was not for three hours so it meant that we could explore exactly how long it was. By ‘we’ I mean my sister, niece, nephew and I, whilst my brother-in-law looked after our hand luggage. It was their family holiday that I had jumped on, because I had wanted to go to India, but was too unconfident to go by myself. Anne would really love to go, but the combination of the heat and the possibility of her immune system meeting a different array of germs meant that it felt a bit too risky.

So, here I was, powerwalking through the middle of this (mile-long it turned out) array of boutiques for perfumes, alcohol and other life essentials, in the first hours of Christmas Eve (at least in Dubai time). It was a good thing, as my legs had fallen asleep during the flight there, and we still had a few more hours of sitting to do but my sister is a fast walker, and her children have been well trained to match her. It was a workout.

We stepped out of the taxi at our hotel, the Grand Hyatt, and it was the first time we’d hit open air since boarding at Manchester. It was around 10am (Indian Time) and the ride across a short space of town had taken a long time because of the sheer amount of traffic. I could do an entire blog on the driving habits of Mumbaikers, and I may still do, but suffice to say, at this point, that my heart was in my mouth on more than one occasion. 

We weren’t in the heat for long, but it was a good jump up the Celsius scale after the air-conditioning of the airports and the transport. Having been out and about for a couple of days, it is very warm but not overly humid. It would probably feel even hotter if there wasn’t an almost persistent haze all around us. This is apparently only a winter phenomenon. Everywhere seems to be dusty, including the leaves on the trees, and the sun, when it penetrates the smog, looks like a sallow disk in the sky 

The hotel is beautiful, and probably going to mean that I’ll be eating beans on toast for a month but it’s worth it. The breakfast, included in the price, is a smorgasbord of delight. There is a decent gym and an outdoor pool, which I have managed to visit just once each, despite my best intentions. However, having only slept for about half an hour in our entire journey it has taken me a couple of days to reorientate my body clock, and we have also managed to pack in quite a few things in already.

I’ll write about those things in due course, but I’m very excited to be back in the land of my forebears, and so far it has not disappointed.