Almost There

We have made it to New Delhi. We actually arrived around 8:30 p.m. India time, but the next few hours were pretty long and tedious. Getting through Customs was a breeze, but getting our luggage took a lot longer. Then we had to go through the process of figuring out we needed to board a shuttle bus that would take us to an entirely different airport for our connecting flight to Hyderabad. Bizarre, but that's what happened.

We arrived at this airport a little before 10. Since we didn't have a boarding pass, we couldn't come in the main airport but had to go to a ticketing room. She said she couldn't give us a boarding pass, but she printed up an itinerary so security would let us in to the main section. When we presented that to him, he said we couldn't come in until 12, because that's when the ticket counter would open. So we went back to the room where you buy tickets and hung out for two hours. This is not a place designed for lengthy waiting. This is us.

Since sleep wasn't really happening, we gave it up and played a game of Scrabble on the iPad. At 12:01 we got up and came back to the main section where the guy finally let us in, but it turns out Jet Airways ticket counter still wasn't open. More sitting in uncomfortable black chairs. Finally we started seeing activity around 12:30 and we were able to get in line for our boarding passes. The best part about this was getting rid of our three checked bags so we could stop hauling all this stuff around.

This airport has a lounge that you can pay to get into, so that's where we've ended up parking. We had to get some Wi-Fi because time for kickoff in the Alabama/Arkansas game was quickly approaching. This is Jeff now... much happier!

All in all, our flight from Chicago was pretty unadventurous. Jeff and I both slept for a few hours, so it made it seem a little quicker. I think our flight time ended up only being 13 1/2 hours, so that's way better than the original 16 we thought we were in for.

I opened my window a couple of hours outside of New Delhi as sunset was approaching. We were flying right over Kabul, Afghanistan at the time, which is a little disconcerting in and of itself. But the view of the mountains was breathtaking. This picture is horrible, but I hope you can at least get a glimpse of what we were looking at.

At this point, I just kept breathing Psalm 24:1, "The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it; the world and all who live in it." Truly a glory moment for God the Creator.

As the sun began to set, the image was majestic. Again, forgive the quality of a cell picture, but I found it amazing that you can almost see the curvature of the earth as the sun disappears from sight. It was so beautiful.

So now it is 1:30 a.m. Delhi time and we have five hours until our next flight. I'm going to try and get some sleep if I can get Jeff to keep quiet while watching the game. Yeah. :)

If all goes well, next post will be from Hyderabad. Keep praying!