From India to Ireland

India and Ireland are very close to each other on an alphabetically ordered list of countries, but it does not take a world traveller to know that they are not so in reality. I was confronted with this fact towards the end of this week during my pilgrimage from Darjeeling to Donegal, a journey that took the better part of two days.

I woke up in Darjeeling on Thursday 17^th and spent the morning at the house. It was uncharacteristically sunny. While much of the group had to leave early for a flight to Delhi, a few of us stayed behind for a later journey. What had happened was that the original flight everyone had booked was cancelled, and people ended up booking different tickets in the ensuing chaos. I was actually quite thankful for the mishap. Staying behind in reduced numbers allowed us to trade gossip with Sparsh’s parents, who gladly contributed their own hilarious observations.

We stopped a few times on our way down to the airport, taking in views of the low-lying portions of the tea estate. Only later did I learn that this low-lying area borders the village of Naxalbari, the birthplace of the Naxalite movement (or, as Sparsh put it, a place “right beside our milk tea estate”). We arrived at the airport with time to spare, but only because my distressed face managed to dissuade Sparsh from giving us a tour of the tea estate near to the airport just an hour and a half before our flight.

What followed was a blur. We boarded a completely full plane for New Delhi and stewed for a good ten minutes before the air conditioning started working properly. Once we arrived, Sparsh gave us a quick ride-by tour of the fancy parts of town, which include several government buildings and embassies. We had dinner with the rest of the group, and at midnight, I had to return to the airport once more.

It took me about two hours to get through security, which seems to be in overdrive – possibly because India is hosting the G20 forum this year and Modi wants the experience to be perfect. My passport was checked four or five times, and my bag was inspected twice in what was perhaps the most annoying display of security theatre I have experienced so far. The queue for the security check got so absurdly slow that even the late passengers who were trying to jump the queue gathered in high enough numbers to form a queue of their own.

I slept very little on the subsequent flights, though I did try hard. Between Darjeeling and Delhi, Delhi and Dubai, Dubai and Birmingham, and Birmingham and Belfast, I nodded off for maybe two very broken up hours. Worse still, when I arrived in Birmingham, I was informed that my flight to Belfast had been cancelled. The operator at Aer Lingus offered me a flight the following morning, but I felt this might be cutting it too close. Instead, I had my ticket cancelled and booked one of the last seats on the seven o’clock EasyJet plane.

Only later did I realise that this change also entailed arriving at a different airport – Belfast International rather than Belfast City. Luckily, the car rental company with which I was renting let me switch to their branch at Belfast International, so I did not have to worry about travelling between the two. What I did have to worry about was driving to the hotel for two and a half hours in the night and pounding rain. The wind was so strong that at one point, it even knocked over a provisional traffic light, and I had to guess at when I could enter the single lane (I guessed wrongly and had to wait among the traffic cones as cars came in the opposite direction).   

The reason for this whole ordeal was a wedding, which took place on the following day. Tom had been my housemate during my first year at Oxford and he and his wife Elva let me stay with them in Birmingham as I worked on my thesis last summer. The wedding was lovely. The food was good, and the speeches were spaced out enough to not become boring. There were also some familiar faces: I stayed at a hotel with my friends Zach and Bonnie, and we spent much of the day with another former housemate, Harry, and his girlfriend Charlotte.  

A crab (Sparsh's family did not believe in its existence as it was only spotted late at night until this fateful morning)

The road to Siliguri