I'm going home - but where the fuck is Ithaca?
No sleep for 48 hours, transfer Bratislava - Prague - Istanbul - New Delhi - Dehra Dun in one breath, travel time 28 hours and arrival to India. Let the journey begin...
This is definitely my personal record and it might be also national record: out of the last 61 hours I slept 6. When I arrived I was awake for 48 hours almost without any sleep. During flight from Instanbul to Delhi I read in one book, that „tiredness is usually just the trick of your mind to stop you doing something that you don’t like“ and I think I’m the living proof of that.
It’s Friday (1:00 a.m.) and the last time I went to sleep was on Tuesday. That sounds cool :-)
Surprisingly, my brain still works, as after this 61 hours I was coding the web page for this stupid blog.
Anyway, the snow between Bratislava and Prague didn’t cause any problem after all, so we arrived to the airport safely and well ahead of the check-in time – by the way it was probably the most beautiful ride of D1 highway that I have ever seen: everything covered in fresh snow, the dawn was breaking and the sky was turning from black to indigo to deep blue to blue to azure. Jirka, thanks again for saving my ass and giving me the ride.
Turkish Airlines are not that bad as Zuzka Vajdova described it at all. Actually, it was one of high-above-average flights, and probably the best food in Economy class ever. Flying over Instanbul is quite a feast for eyes– it’s an infinite city. I must see it one day.
No surprises on the flight to Delhi either, and here I was in Delhi international airport. Surprisingly they let me enter India without any problems (which really surprised me, as expiration date on my visa was corrected by a MARKER by the Indian consul in Slovakia, as she had originally issued me 3 months visa instead of 6 months). Probably they are used to it :-)
Welcome to India: eastern style toilet. Damn it, I managed to bypass them for 31 years, but if I intend to stay in India for some time, it will not be possible any more, and so I decided to do a trial round here at the airport. Thanks god that they at least had toilet paper, so I didn’t have to do it all-eastern-style! Europe, I miss you :..-(
3 hours at Prague airport, 4 hours at Instanbul, 4 hours at Delhi – that’s a LOT of airport time (especially if you don’t have any golden air carrier card which would entitle you to at least sit on something not made of metal).
The last flight took only 45 minutes, and here I was at Dehra Dun airport and the trip finally began!
It took another hour by taxi (no buses) to Dehra Dun, I checked in some really LOW-key hotel (I’d better get used to this) and went for a little walk in Dehra Dun.
The only good thing about cities like Dehra Dun is that they immediately make you love cities like Bratislava. Bratislava might be an uninteresting hole by European standards, but compared to Dehra Dun (which actually has the same population) it looks like a sparkling diamond on the surface of the Earth.
Dehra Dun is a structure-less sprawl of, of, well, of SOMETHING. It looks like potatoes overcooked for 5 hours and then mixed with mud and dirt. Yes, this is how I expected India to look like, I’m totally satisfied!
I can tell one thing: Dehra Dun is NOT my home. Yesterday I left Bratislava and from this moment on I’m going home. The only question is: where the fuck is (new) Ithaca? It may be Bratislava, Sydney, Honolulu, some place in Costa Rica or Indonesia, or Kabul. Who knows?
Ancient gods, make the winds blow the right way!
add like button Service und Garantie
