Finally Home

We knew that the journey home was always going to be a long one and it started off well as, contrary to my fears, I managed to close the suitcases and the taxi was on time!

The journey to the airport was unremarkable as we had now got used to the manic Indian driving experience. The airport, however, was crazy with several tourist charter planes leaving at the same time. We booked in our luggage and joined the lengthy queue for passport control. The place was packed with Russians and they are not very good at queuing and this started to make the Brits annoyed as we pride ourselves on our ability to queue for hours without breaking into a sweat.

Eventually we managed to get through passport control and security and grabbed a seat in the waiting area. It wasn't too long before our flight was called for boarding but we were refused entry because the girl who booked our luggage through had failed to put a 'fit to fly' tag on our hand luggage. "What do you want us to do?" I asked "Go and get one" "Where?" "Back there" with a spurious wave of the hand "Where?" I pleaded but she refused to enter into any more discussion on the matter. We frantically headed back to security but it was now closed and we eventually found a security team at the other end of the airport. I explained the problem to the security officer and she said "That's not our problem madam, it is your airline" "But we are about to board what do we need to do?" "Give me your bags" and we handed the bags over and she put them to one side and then busied herself with something else. By this time we were frantic "Our plane is boarding, we don't want to miss our plane" I pleaded. Eventually they re-scanned the bags and put the required tag on them - we were fit to fly and managed to embark.

We were so relieved to have made it onto the plane and settled ourselves into our seats for the ten and a half hour flight. We sat and waited and waited but still did not take off. A headcount was requested by the Indian authorities before they would let us depart and it appears that the security team had miscounted the number of passengers on the plane and we were shown as being one over. Thirty minutes later we were cleared to depart and eventually the Indian sun disappeared behind us.

Hurrah - we were off and we snuggled down in our seats for the long journey home. Suddenly, when listening to the announcement from the Captain a terrible realisation dawned on me. We were not going to arrive in Gatwick in time to catch our connection to Newcastle. The documentation provided to me by the airline stated that arrival time at Gatwick was 18:10 but it would appear that they had failed to take into account that the clocks had gone forward. We would now only have 30 minutes to collect our luggage, get through customs, check in our luggage, clear security and get to our gate. 

The next 10 hours passed slowly and the crew were really sweet and just before landing swapped our seats and put us next to the doors so we could be the first to exit the plane when we landed.

We landed ten minutes before our scheduled boarding time but we still sprinted out of the plane, collected our baggage and arrived at the Flybe check in desk which had now closed. As expected, we had missed our flight. The next flight from Flybe was at 8.30am the following day. They had no other flights out anywhere that night. I asked her to check if there were any other flights to Scotland or northern England and there was. British Airways had a flight to Edinburgh leaving in 50 minutes but it was leaving from the other terminal. So we were off again running to the shuttle to take us to the northern terminal and upto the British Airways desk. How slowly the booking in process took and finally our luggage was checked in and we were running again through to security. Security did not like the look of Andrew's backpack and they kept it in the x-ray machine for ages and then asked him to open in up for a search when it came out. He had a flask in it which he used for water when we were on our trip but it was empty but they didn't like the look of it and needed to check. Cries of "I don't believe it!" resonated in our heads as we ran to our gate and arrived just as the flight started to board. We had managed to get in contact with Mike and confirmed that we were on the flight so Mike now had to make the journey to Edinburgh to collect us.

The flight took off on time and we finally sat down and breathed a huge sigh of relief. We had made it despite all of the things that were set to try us - we had done more bickering in the past 24 hours than the last 28 days put together. It was a really stressful journey .... but it wasn't over yet. As we came into Edinburgh the Captain advised us that there were gale force winds blustering around and to be aware that we may have a bumpy landing. This is proved to be the case as the little plane lurched from side to side as it descended to the runway and upon landing plummeted to the runway, tilted over onto one wheel before coming to a halt. Bumpy landing indeed.

Surprisingly our luggage also made it with us and Mike arrived some 5 minutes later and the family was united once more. It took us a couple of hours to drive home and we got in just after midnight. It was great to be home, cats remembered me and my bed was calling. We had been on the road for 24 hours but it had been worth it. 

The washing machine is now working overtime and we are slowly getting everything sorted.

What a day .... but all ended well.