So you think your travel day was bad?

A day and a half late and after nearly three days of traveling, I am relieved to report that I made it safely to Normandy. I'm going to try to keep this from getting too long, but no promises. Here's the story:

Jan 17 - In the midst of a rumored strike in Kathmandu, I was informed by my parents' travel agent that my flight for the next morning had been canceled and I would have to get rebooked on a later flight. Since I would miss my connecting flight, that meant spending an extra night in Delhi before going on to Paris. Not seeing another option that wasn't an insanely tight connection in a foggy part of the world, we all scrambled to sort that out.

Jan 18 - Out of curiosity, I checked online just before leaving for the airport and discovered that, according to the internet at least, my original morning flight actually went after all. So that means that all the subsequent headaches could have been avoided. But that's neither here nor there. I got to Delhi without any problems, only to discover: 1) The airline had absolutely no intention of providing me with the complementary hotel room the travel agent had promised, and of course I had been unable to get any kind of documentation from her in time; 2) Even if I could locate an affordable hotel on my own at night in Delhi (clearly not advisable), the Delhi immigration officials are notoriously strict and I most likely would have issues trying to get out of the airport for the night and back in again; and 3) Apparently my flight booking and my ticket number were for different airlines, which created a world of problems, as you might expect. After much back and forth, I finally managed to get the airline to give me a boarding pass, begged them to make sure my bag made it on the correct flight, and seeing no other intelligent option, settled in for a 20-hour wait at the Delhi airport. I won't go into details on that, but you can imagine how fun that was...

Jan 19 - Thankfully, my flight to Paris was more or less on time, but it took forever to get our bags, and of course mine was literally the last bag off (I was completely convinced it was lost forever by that point). By the time I got my bag, I knew I wasn't going to make my inter-city train to Normandy I had hoped to take, so I spent the next hour or so trying to navigate the French public transportation system (in French, naturally), at a run, carrying all my stuff, in hope I would still be able to catch the second last train of the evening. I got to the inter-city station just in time, sweet-talked the closed ticket office into selling me a ticket so I wouldn't have to run all over the station trying to find the right machine to do it, found my train, grabbed a seat, and collapsed in relief. Unfortunately that relief was short-lived. 5-10 minutes later, a guy came and informed me that, oh no, even though this train says it's going to your destination, it's actually shutting down for the night. Apparently, there was a different train I was supposed to be on. I ran out to the platform, only to discover that the correct train rolled out 3 minutes before and there were no more trains until morning.

There were a few hotels nearby, so I went in and asked the price, and almost fell over when I heard the answer - 190 Euros for a single room for a night. And yes, that was the going rate for this area. Lucky for me, the guy at the front desk spoke English and took pity on me, so he told me how to get to an area with cheaper hotels using the city metro. After successfully finding an open shop that sold SIM cards, buying the SIM card, getting it to work in my Gambian phone, and talking to Jacob (who was waiting for me at the train station in Normandy), I set out to find a more reasonably priced hotel. Sidenote - I am so grateful I have to have a husband who is so level-headed, has complete faith in my ability to take care of myself, and doesn't panic about stuff like this. He always makes me feel better :-) Anyways, after a short metro ride and some searching, I located a hotel with a room available (for 47 Euros) and called it a night.

Jan 20 - After a decent night's sleep and a much-needed but very cold shower, I headed back to the inter-city train station as soon as the metro trains started running in the morning. I got there with 10 minutes to spare, caught the first train to Normandy, met up with Jacob, and then everything was happily ever after. Or something like that :-) The end.