Here We Go Again...Or In Other Words...London, Here I Come
Bombay, Thursday, May 5, 2022
I cannot believe that it has been almost 3 years since I last left London. This city is truly My Happy Place and as soon as my feet hit its soil, I feel as if I have reached my second home. So, you can just imagine the excitement with which I packed and prepared for my month-long travels in the UK. It was an excitement made vastly greater by the fact that Covid had grounded us for so long. Being able to spread my wings, once again, in this glorious city, felt like an incredible gift that I grabbed with both hands after whispering a prayer of gratitude.
It did feel odd, to be honest, making arrangements after such a long period of time. Even as I used my credit card to pay for my air-ticket, my hands shook--as one tends to forget the drill. I am not usually the sort of person who does any online shopping and Covid did not make me an online shopper of me either (I have been known, throughout my life, to buck the trend). Hence, even as I had booked tickets, over the previous few days, for trains and the theatre, I was seized with nervousness...indeed, it had been too too long.
But the day finally dawned--and dawned is the operative word--when I was to be up and away. I had requested Rohit, my Dad's Man Friday, to wake up early (at 6.00 am) with me, to give me a hand with my baggage as I left my apartment and indeed, he obliged. At 6.30am, I left my apartment, called an Uber, had the good fortune to find one in five minutes and was entering a really battered vehicle, for my ride to the airport. It was exactly 6.45 am when I thanked Rohit for his assistance and exactly 7.00 am (if you can believe it), when my Uber was pulling up at Shivaji International Airport in Bombay. I was exactly on schedule as my flight would be leaving at 10.00 am. I had a two-hour flight to Delhi, a two-hour layover in the capital, followed by a 9-hour flight to London. I was ready for the long haul.
A word about my suitcases and what I was carrying: I had two suitcases (miraculously, my ticket permitted 2 suitcases although I was not crossing the Atlantic) and a carry-on. However, one of my suitcases was empty (I will fill it up with all the stuff Llew will be carrying for me from Southport, Connecticut) and so I placed my carry-on bag inside it. I would be dropping this suitcase off at my friend's place in Paddington en route to my hotel as soon as I landed in London. My second suitcase was half-empty because if there is one person on earth who knows how to travel light, it is me. I have exactly 13 pieces of clothing for an entire month!!! Yes, thirteen! Three leggings, 3 shirts, 3 cardigans. I also have a pair of formal black trousers for my presentation, a silk shirt for evenings out, a formal jacket, a down jacket for colder days. I have one pair of shoes (my trusted Dansko clogs), 1 pair of flip-flops to wear at home, 1 pair of PJs, 4 sets of underwear, 3 pairs of socks, 1 pair of pantyhose, 2 pairs of knee-highs. And that is it, on the clothing front...
All went well with check-in. The traffic assistant was kind enough to oblige me with my seat choices. I requested window seats on both sectors, but he could only give me one (Delhi to London). From Bombay to Delhi, I had an aisle seat. And after boarding our flight on schedule at 10.00 am, for some weird reason, we were held up on the tarmac and ended up taking off 40 minutes later. I was a wee bit worried as I did have a connecting flight...but I was certain my flight to Delhi would be held up until this flight arrived, as I was flying with the same carrier on both sectors.
I had the most brilliant first sector flight as the lady seated besides me, with whom I promptly made friends, was superb company. Sonia turned out to have so much in common with me including having left the US to return to live in Bombay. She'd worked at the World Bank for several years, had a stint as an investment banker and was happy to give it all up when she made the decision to return to her roots. We gabbed non-stop all the way to Delhi where she introduced me to her daughter, Anushka. We parted, as she deplaned at Delhi, with the assurance that we would most certainly stay in touch once I returned to Bombay.
It was a bit hairy making my connection--we were only 3 passengers proceeding to London and Air-India took care to escort us to our connecting gate. However, we had to clear immigration and security in Delhi as we were switching from a domestic to an international flight. All formalities done, I boarded the second aircraft and excitedly took my window seat, only to discover to my huge disappointment, that I was seated right on the wing. Of course, this meant that my line of vision of the earth passing below, was severely curtailed...but I was grateful to have a window anyway for (as regular readers of this blog know), nothing gives me greater delight than viewing our world from 35,000 feet above mean sea level. Also, thankfully, the middle seat on a three-seater set, remained empty throughout the flight. This gave me (and the lady seated at the far end) a chance to raise our legs, stretch, etc. and make ourselves more comfortable. I have to admit that seated in a tiny seat for 9 hours at a stretch, has long lost its appeal for me...
The flight could not have been more comfortable. I watched two movies: Mamma Mia (for the second time, but it simply never gets old) and The Mule, starring Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper that was wonderful. I had downloaded a bunch of my favorite magazines and novels on to my Ipad, but to my enormous disappointment, without a network connection, I was unable to open them. I slept in short bursts about three times on the flight, kicked back with a G&T and enjoyed Indian non-veg meals (lunch and a snack service) throughout. As I always do on long-haul flights, I got out of my seat every two hours, walked up and down the aisle, did a series of stretching exercises and occasionally peeped out of the window. We were above the cloud line for almost the entire flight but I did spy the snow-tipped Alps at one point while over Europe. We had almost no turbulence at all through an extraordinarily smooth flight.
Touch down in London was equally smooth. As always, my first sighting of the Thames provides perspective and I knew exactly where I was when I spied Hammsersmith Bridge from above. From then on, I cursed the fact that I was above the wing as we flew directly above London which just happened to be cloudless. I spotted all the major landmarks from on high as it was just shy of 6.30 pm and London was still bathed in bright daylight: the London Eye, Canary Wharf, the Walkie-Talkie, the Shard...in the distance, the Oval Stadium and even further away, Wembley Stadium with its tell-tale arch. I was, as always, almost jumping in my seat with excitement. I was shortly be in my favorite city in the whole world and I could not wait.
We landed at a distant bay (as is always the case with Air-India) but as all I had was a small, personal backpack (which would do double duty as my pocketbook during my stay), I was carefree as I walked briskly toward Immigration. I am always grateful for my American passport that hurries me through Immigration in minutes as I do not need to see an immigration officer, but merely go through the electronic machines with the rest of the UK and EU citizens. It was SUCH a privilege as indeed I cleared Immigration in machines and felt sorry for those in the long, winding lines, waiting to be manually questioned and cleared. My first bag came within minutes but, annoyingly, my second one, took its time to arrive. I wheeled them in a cart past the green channel and, voila, I was in the UK once again.
It was not long before I was buying myself a Heathrow Express train ticket as, on the flight, I had made the decision to take it and cut down travel time into the city. Taking a black cab directly would mean sitting in traffic for more than an hour (especially around Chiswick where my cab has always been stuck) and I had already been on the road (as it were) for 13 hours. I was still as fresh as a daisy, but I did want to get to my hotel as quickly as I could manage it. I was shocked to find that the Heathrow Express ticket has soared in price from 15 pounds (the last time I had paid for it) to 25 pounds! In fact, as I soon found out, everything has escalated in price in London, in the post-Covid era. Using the directions marked 'Trains to London" (not Underground), I arrived at the spiffy new platform, boarded the spiffy Heathrow Express train and was at Paddington in exactly 15 minutes. From there, I wheeled my two suitcases with backpack on my back, to the taxi stand and took my first black cab of this trip to Southwick Street, just outside Paddington Station, where my friend Bande lives. The cab driver turned out to be a real darling--a young 'un of about 30 who could not keep his mouth shut! Except that I could barely follow his Cockney accent and kept guessing half of what he said to me.
We were at my friend's building in about five minutes, he came down to his lobby when the doorman called for him, we had a brief reunion as he relieved me of my suitcase and I re-entered my cab. Only later would I realize that the one thing I had packed in my empty suitcase was my down jacket! I would need to return to his place to pick it up just in case London got too damply cold. As it was, the black hoodie I wore was more than adequate and I was extremely relieved to get out of the sauna bath which had been Bombay, on my departure, to the delightfully temperate, spring weather of London.
About twenty minutes later, with some traffic at Marylebon and Euston ( as expected), we were pulling up outside my hotel in Holborn, I paid the cabbie using my credit card and was checking into my room. It was clean, indeed quite spotless, offered free wifi to which I connected all my devices, called Llew in the US to tell him I had arrived safely, texted Chriselle and a few others, brushed and flossed my teeth and readied myself for bed. It had been a most complicated journey to my home for the next nine nights, but every aspect of it had gone accordingly to plan and I was not an unhappy camper.
Until tomorrow, cheerio...
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