5 am, New Delhi

The flight was not so bad considering that it was 13 hours from Newark to Delhi.  In those 13 hours we flew through an entire day just about, boarding the plane just after sunset in New Jersey, hitting a sunrise as we were flying over Greenland and then making our approach to Delhi just as the sun was setting again.  It's also really strange to me to grasp that we fly so far north (We flew north of Iceland) to  make the straightest route between New Jersey and New Delhi.

I am up because I am jet-lagged.  I count myself lucky because this is when I awoke without an alarm and it's not an unreasonable time to get up. With luck I'll have an okay day (not too bleary, not to headachey) and go to sleep at a normal local time.  I've been fighting a cold for days before I left and it didn't cause me too much difficulty during the flight.

After we arrived last night , we needed to confirm the flight time of our plane to Kathmandu. It has changed 4 times since we booked in February and has been a real hassle as Sam, our wonderful host and friend has been trying to arrange for a driver to pick us up from Kathmandu airport.  Finding out last night that it had moved again from 6:00 am to 1:35 pm, we have declared defeat and will hire a cab.  At any rate, we figured we'd could just grab our bags and go from the arrivals level to departures and confirm at the ticket counter.  That's when we discovered just how tight the security is here.  I'd read that you needed to have a printed airline ticket to even enter the airport in New Delhi and sure enough, as we walked towards an elevator to departures we had to stop at a checkpoint and have our (outdated) printed tickets compared to our passports.  They pointed out that our tickets were valid for the following day and we were able to explain our siltation and get approval to go upstairs, where we explained it again to another set of guards with automatic weapons. They pointed us out the doors so that we walked outside the length of the ticket area to get to a non-secured area separate from where people with valid tickets check in. This is where we could speak to a ticket agent and get new printed tickets.  All very polite, but lots and lots of guns.  The threat of terrorism here is very real, and they have done a pretty good job of managing the threat while dealing huge crowds coming and going.  I guess it only gets complicated when people like us show up and have to do things out of the ordinary.

Walking outdoors to get to the ticketing area was our first chance to be outdoors and breathe the air.  There is a strong base note of burning spice-wood in the air. Fragrant and exotic to my stuffy nose.  The temperature is in the low 80's (29 c).  

Time to grab a shower and start my day.