Planes, Trains & Automobiles — The Journey to Chandigarh
I can’t even begin writing this blog without laughing, because when just about everything goes wrong, all you can do is laugh! That’s the best way to describe our journey from Toronto, Canada to Chandigarh, India this past Wednesday. Myself and Troy are the two Canadians on the team, which was great that we could travel together.
We were booked on a direct, 13.5 hour flight from Toronto to Delhi. Easy, right? Well that was the plan, but then as life has it, the day before we left Pakistan’s military shot down two Indian warplanes and major conflict erupted between the two countries. This was the biggest incident between the two countries in over two decades — and tension was at an all time high. Pakistan’s airspace immediately closed, Air Canada cancelled our flight and announced they were stopping service to India. We quickly called Air Canada and found out that our only option to get to India by March 1 was a flight from Toronto to London Heathrow, followed by an 8-hour layover and then a flight from Heathrow to Delhi. Oh, did I mention there was also a major snow storm in Toronto this same day?! We finally were able to leave Toronto after a 2-hour de-icing delay and landed in London 7-hours later. Although very tired, we had a very long layover in London so we were about to head to our next terminal to get some rest when it occurred to me that I did not have a boarding pass for the second leg of our journey. Troy had a boarding pass but for some reason I never received one when I checked-in to the flight in Toronto. I had a really bad feeling that my luggage would not be on the Delhi flight without a boarding pass, and sure enough, we checked with airport staff and my bag was on the luggage carousel in London! That meant we had to go through UK customs, pick up my bag and then go back through security and then check in for the flight. In total this took over 4-hours, so we were very lucky we had such a long layover! We encountered another issue when we had to go back through UK security — we had too many liquids! In North America, as long as your liquids/gels are under 100ml you can bring as many as you want in your carry-on. However in the UK, we quickly found out that you could only have one small plastic bag worth of liquids! I had 5 bags worth…. The security officers told us we would have to check another bag or throw out all of our beloved MAPLE SYRUP we brought as gifts. Clearly, throwing out the maple syrup was not an option (it’s basically gold in Canada), so we went back out through security again and checked another bag, then re-entered security.
Finally, after another 2-hour flight delay, we took off from London to Delhi on a 9-hour flight. Once we landed in Delhi, we found out that our connecting flight to Chandigarh was also cancelled! All of our teammates from the 9 countries around the world had already been in Delhi for a day or more so we were the last ones to arrive. Our partner agency VSO quickly arranged a last minute coach bus to transport us to Chandigarh, and as soon as we landed we boarded the bus. Normally, this would be a one-hour flight. In total it took us over 6-hours to get to Chandigarh by bus. Driving on Indian roads is an experience in itself and is a story for another day. Finally at 10:00PM we arrived to our beautiful hotel in Chandigarh. It was the first time we were able to sleep lying flat in three days! I have never appreciated a good night’s sleep more in my life.
The IBM Corporate Service Corps experience has just only begun but after the journey to get here, I think we are truly ready for anything!
