A 5-6-7-8!
Going to India is easy!
- First, go get a bunch of shots, and have nummy live typhoid culture for breakfast for about a week.
- Next, get your visa. This will be a day out of your life you will probably never see again.
- Pack. When you’re done, throw out half the stuff you packed, and start over.
- Now for the big travel fun! Go to the airport.
- When you get there, discover that the plane does not leave for 5 hours, and it’s not worth it to go to a motel. But look, airports have wireless! So your choices are to try to sleep in the most uncomfortable chairs imaginable, or keep yourself awake with email…
- 5 hours later, check in on standby. You will get a piece of paper that basically says “You’ll probably get a seat on the next plane, but we aren’t promising nobody nuthin’”.
- Take this amazingly valuable piece of paper to the gate.
- At the gate, wait for your name to be called in a dramatic form of passenger bingo. If this doesn’t happen, prepare to repeat step 7, and probably step 6.
- Your name gets called! Yippee! Fly time l!
- When you land 5 hours later, the friendly flight attendant announces that your plane has landed…in English only, since you haven’t left the States yet. This is just the first leg of a very long trip.
- At the new airport, race to the next gate, and repeat steps 7 and 8, and maybe step 6.
- Repeat Step 9.
- When you land 8 hours later, the friendly flight attendant announces that your plane has landed…in English and French, because this leg has gotten you only as far as Europe.
- Repeat step 6. This will take three times as long as at an American airport, because it will require you to use two different languages and force two airlines that don’t normally communicate to work together.
- Repeat steps 7, 8, and 9.
- When you land 8 hours later, the friendly flight attendant announces that your plane has landed…but this time you don’t understand a word of the announcement, because it’s all in Hindi. Welcome to India.
EXTRA CREDIT: How many hours did Nyondo spend in transit before realizing that all of her bras were still in Berkeley, California? (Be prepared to show your work.)
