It's cold!

After all my waiting for flights to resume in Europe to get home I found another hurdle to my return home.  I had finally managed to get a seat on a flight back home on Tuesday but when I tried to check in I came face to face with bureaucracy and was refused access through immigration and escorted out of the airport.

As required here in India, when I arrived in Koraput I had filled in forms and submitted photos and copies of passport and visa to register as a foreigner.  Unfortunately, I did not follow through and challenge the assurance that all was completed and insist that I got a piece of paper confirming registration in my possession.  Without that paper, I was not allowed to leave the country.  Trapped!  My fault of course for not continuously hassling colleagues to make sure that all the formalities were properly completed but this was all at a time when I was trying to get to grips with lots of new things - new job, new culture, new environment, new colleagues, new language etc and it just got forgotten about.  Which was very unfortunate.

The only way that we could work out that I would be sure to resolve the problem was to return to Koraput to complete the process, paying the fine as penalty for late registration.  We thought about trying to do the administration in Delhi but there was the risk that I'd be sent back to Orissa as the Delhi authorities would not have known what I had been doing in India.  I also thought about doing the task remotely, sending my papers by courier but that would take 3-4 days in each direction with the associated risk that there would be more delays if there was any problem iwth the paperwork.  So back to Koraput it was.

I decided to fly back as I couldn't face another 40 hours each way on the train.  We managed to get a seat on a flight on Wednesday and had a mad dash to go to the market to get passport photos and recharge my phone with more credit then back to the hotel for rapid packing of bags, flinging the things I thought I'd need for a brief visit into a small pack and shoving everything else into my big bags for storage at the Programme Office until I returned.  I couldn't find my Orissa SIM card which I'd put somewhere in the bottom of a bag, assuming that I wouldn't need it again in the foreseeable future but no matter, my contact back in Koraput knew my Delhi SIM card number.

I don't like airports.  They are stressful places at the best of times and by now I was highly stressed and feeling a complete idiot but I was amused to see security stopping a man trying to take toy machine gun in his hand luggage.   It made me start reading all the other things that aren't allowed - I knew about dynamite, knives, aerosols etc but cattle prods and throwing starplates?  I guess a cattle prod could be pretty nasty but what is a throwing starplate?  I decided that I was reassured to see that security is being taken seriously.

I settled down to the usual tedious wait for my flight and heard an announcement made about delay.  The screen message showed that it would leave half hour later than scheduled.  I started chatting to a friendly man who told me he came from Dehradun, surprised that I knew where it was but then thought that I heard my name over the tannoy.  I stopped talking and of course the announcement was not repeated but spotted that the board was showing that my flight had been brought back forward to it's original departure time.  At last, the message was repeated, stating that this was last announcement for boarding.  Rapid exit to the departure gate needed but I made it on board.

I landed in Visakhapatnam sometime after 7pm.  It was very easy for the taxi triver to find me at airport as I was the only white person there.  We drove through terrible traffic out of Vizag, taking about 2 hours just to clear the city and stopped at around 10:30 for some food at a truckers' dhaba.  I had a sneaking suspicion that I might have been the first white woman to have stopped there judging from the curious looks I got.  I was surprised to see a large herd of water buffalo being driven along the road at around 1:00am, maybe it's safer herding them at that time of night when the roads are quieter.  We arrived at my hotel at 1:30am but of course all the gates were padlocked and no-one answered the phone.  The taxi driver shouted loudly and rattled the metal gates to get the attention of someone inside, probably waking up all the hotel guests and half the neighbourhood in the process.  I hadn't used this hotel before although I'd been inside to attend a presentation.  It's managed by the Koraput Sri Jagannath temple and has a very homely feel.  It was very clean but I was a bit disconcerted to find a leech slithering around in my bathroom and that there was no towel.  My clean pyjama trousers became a towel substitute.

In the morning, colleague A from my NGO came to see me and told me he had to go to a meeting out in the field but that I should wait at the hotel for colleague B to collect me.  He also told that the NGO would pay the fine for late registration.  I only had my Delhi SIM card with me which doesn't have contact details for many Koraput colleagues and foolishly I didn't think to ask for the phone number for colleague B in case of any problems.  Meanwhile, colleague B was at the office, having been told to wait for me to go there.  He had tried to call me but only had the number for my Orissa phone which of course was switched off and back in Delhi.

After a couple of hours of waiting and trying to stay calm and patient I tried to call colleague A but his phone had no network coverage out in the field.  I tried phoning colleague D who I knew was at the same meeting but his phone wouldn't work either.  I sent a message home and asked Jon to hack into my mailbox and send a mail to colleague B giving him the right phone number and asking him to call me ASAP which he duly did and I managed to get to talk to said colleague and arrange for my collection from the hotel.  When we arrived at the NGO office I was surprised to be asked for the money to pay the late registration fine but fortunately had sufficient cash in my bag to pay the fee.

Off I went with colleague C to the office of the Superintendant of Police to lodge the paperwork, only to be told to return at 7:00pm the same day.  I had a rather fretful afternoon, worrying about the situation waiting for 7pm to arrive.  In the evening, I was told that when the registration was completed I then had to apply for permission to leave the country, sending my stress levels shooting up again and we were told to return the next morning.  By this time I was too wound up to sleep much and returned to the SP office the next day to be greeted by a 'very important' looking man who came outside laughing and said I was lucky he was on duty as it was all sorted out.  Which fortunately it was and I finally managed to get my registration documents and permission to leave India.

The next hurdle was returning to Delhi and getting a flight back to the UK.  I tried to send SMS messages and make a couple of calls only to find that my phone had no network coverage and was told that there was a big network problem that day.  Meanwhile, colleague A had gone to a travel agent with most of my remaining cash and some of his own to buy a ticket for me to return to Delhi.  The agent was supposed to bring me the ticket at the hotel.  I waited for the 15 minutes I was promised, then another 15 minutes and then some more before asking the hotel to take collection of the ticket when it arrived as I needed to contact people in Delhi and home.  So off I went to a cyber cafe, only to find that there was a power cut to add to the problems.  Fortunately it had an an inverter so I was able to get onto the internet and sent emails to people who needed to know about the success.  It's hard to hold proper conversations via email but it's better than nothing.  I then needed to photocopy my registration documents but the lack of electricity stopped that. 

While I was sat in the cyber cafe I overheard the teenager in charge of the place struggling to say my name and writing it out on a piece of paper.  Confused, I indicated that this was me that he was talking about but his lack of English and my poor Oriya made it difficult to understand what was happening.  I decided that maybe this was the travel agent that had been asked to get me a ticket to fly to Delhi but then was further surprised to see colleague C walking into the cyber cafe with a wad of cash.  He explained that the reservation that the first travel agent had made had gone wrong and been cancelled so they'd asked the people in the cyber cafe (which also doubles up as a travel agent) to get me a ticket.  They made a reservation but nothing could be printed as the power was still out.  Stress levels at boiling point by now.

I asked colleague C if he could give me a lift to an ATM to get more cash to pay the balance for my flight and the taxi fare and then on to the NGO office which still had power to make my photocopies.  He very kindly helped me to sort everything out and returned to the cyber cafe/travel agent to pick up the tickets later that afternoon.

Later in the afternoon I was invited to go round to the homes of colleagues A, C and D.  First house was colleague D where I met his wife and son and was shown round before being fed sweets, chai and juice.  I was taken to meet his neighbours then we moved onto the home of colleague C.  I was welcomed in to meet his 2 daughters, niece, wife and mother and was given fruit, sweets and juice before being taken outside to meet some of his neighbours and other relatives.  Last social visit for the day was to the house of colleague A to meet his wife and son for bhaji, more sweets and juice.  It was all very kind and touching to be greeted like a long-lost friend and I couldn't help feeling sad that I hadn't had similar invitations while I was still working and living in Koraput.  I might have felt less isolated.

Feeling full of very sweet food and drink I got back to the hotel and packed my bag ready for a 5:30am start the next day.  I had worried about waking the staff up at this time but it was not a problem at all.  This hotel, being attached to the temple opens up very early and I saw more people in reception at 5:30am than I had on the previous trips through.  I was able to enjoy the journey back to Vizag this time, feeling more relaxed after completing the administration and travelling in daylight.  The driver had brought his wife and 2 sons with him and they all sat in the back seat while I took the front passenger seat.  They were very friendly and well behaved and despite a minor vomiting incident in the back and slight concern when I saw a lorry skidding sideways along the road towards us after braking on the rough surface I enjoyed the drive.  The road twists and turns through spectacular hills, part of the Eastern ghats.  We spotted a snake slithering over the road, dozens of cattle, water buffalo and goats being taken to market on foot or lurching around on the back of open trucks or squashed into autos. 

The roads in Orissa are really bad, potholes and rough stony surfaces and little more than rough tracks in places, limiting speed to around 20km p/h some of the way (and this is a national inter-state highway).  There are frequently large rocks littering the road and  wrecks of lorries that didn't make the steep hills and hairpin bends litter roadside.  Some stretches of the road are being rebuilt and there were piles of rocks along some stretches with people wielding hammers breaking them down into smaller  pieces for hardcore which looked really hard work.

We stopped for breakfast at another dhaba in Vizniagaram where I had iddli and chai.  Back in the car I was given a banana and a sweet fizzy drink as I was their guest before being dropped safely at the airport to catch my flight.  Unfortunately, I had selected a flight that required me to change to a different flight en route (much much cheaper than a direct flight) and I had a 4 hour stopover in Hyderabad.   However, I made it back to Delhi, arrived at a hotel near the airport and was reunited with my big bags that had been secured in the office in Delhi.  I sunk down with a cup of tea at about 10pm then reorganised my luggage yet again before retiring to bed in an effort to get some sleep before getting up to leave for the airport at 5am the next day. 

This time I got through immigration successfully and had a comfortable and punctual flight back home.  Looking down at the land below the plane as we came into land I was struck at how green everything looked, a really vivid green after the dry Indian countryside.  Getting off the plane my first reaction was how cold and wet it was but I guess that's to be expected, coming home to England after 9 months in India.  It's around 4164 miles/6701 km from Delhi to London then another 110 miles/1609 km back to my home.  That journey took 15 hours including the 3 hours hanging around Delhi airport, about the same time as it took me to get from Koraput to Delhi.

I will bring this blog to a close soon now that I am no longer in Koraput.  However, over the next couple of days I will take my camera out with me to try to capture the things that surprise or delight me on my return home for my final post.