Long day of travel to get to Delhi, India to stage for the rest of the trip to Agra and the Taj Mahal tomorrow.
The trip to Taj Mahal for all the world cruisers was split into two groups. Group 1 left from Kochi and Group 2 is a couple days later. I was in Group 1 which was further split into a morning and afternoon subgroups. We were in the afternoon group so we flew out in the afternoon (so got some extra sleep in the morning…sort of).
With the late start, just wandered around the ship for a bit before packing up for the short trip, etc. Looked out over the Indian Ocean to find SUPER calm waters which was awesome and just enjoyed that for a few minutes.
The Tour
Bus Ride
We eventually went out and got on our bus for an hour(ish) to the airport. On the bus, we had a little bit of a snafu.
For some more background context, our groups were not just broken out into two subgroups (morning and afternoon), but we were also separated into specific bus group numbers, and each bus had specific people and numbers on the bus. It was written in the corner of our excursion ticket and very easy to miss.
For our bus, we were supposed to have a certain amount of people, and that # of people were all on the bus, however, one of the people on the bus was actually supposed to be on a separate bus so they couldn’t find their boarding pass when they were being handed out. Turned out after a bit of conversation that someone else had opted to NOT come, so we should’ve actually had one less person on the tour.
While passing out the tickets, this was the interaction with the guide which was SUPER strange and uncomfortable (the guests around me were also confused and uncomfortable as we talked about it after the fact).
Guide (Calling Out Names on Boarding Pass)
Me: That’s mine.
Guide (Ignores me and my hand raised), continues to next boarding pass
Me (After all other passes have been handed out): That one was mine, you ignored me and moved on.
Guide (Looks down at boarding pass): Oh you’re a different one.
Me (Looking at the boarding pass): Wait, why am I different?
(There’s nothing different on my boarding pass, not in first class or anything, or have any sort of notes, restrictions, etc.)
Me (Again): Why is mine different?
Guide: Well, this is a world cruise so we have people coming from all over the world.
Me (staring blankly back)….
Guide: Where are you from?
Me: The States. Minnesota.
Guide (doesn’t respond, just turns around and walks away)
Me: Wait, why does that matter? and how am I different?
Guide (no response, walks to front of bus and continues with random tour info)
Me and rest of guests in the back (look at each other incredulously.
Airport
Got to the airport and Dr. Jenny and Kristian were able to get me into the lounge so we chilled there for a bit waiting for our plane. Got a bunch of photo editing done while trying to catch up from the glut of photos.
Flight to Delhi
The actual flight was pretty nice. Really nice airline, but also interesting to find encouragement to vote on their flight safety manuals, and also a slightly weird flex being the 20th best in-flight entertainment. Not sure what the limit is internally for me, but maybe anything out of the top 10 isn’t something I’d flex about? Mostly slept on the flight, trying to catch sleep while I can since we’re going to be fairly sleep deprived the next couple days.
Transfer to Hotel
We got our bags and headed to our buses once we landed in Delhi. Even though it was already nearing midnight, there were still a lot of people and traffic coming out of the Delhi Airport. They greeted us with fresh marigolds which was a nice touch as we got onto our buses. Got to the hotel and had to go back through security to get into the Hotel and got some more goodies. A necklace, a bindi applied to our foreheads as we walked into the hotel and some raw mango juice. By the time we got to our rooms it was already 1AM and we had to wake up by 5AM to get on the buses.
The raw mango drink was NOT what I expected. It had some really strong spices and was more bitter than sweet. After one sip, I was already wanting to not have it all, but didn’t want to waste, so just chugged the rest (what a mistake).
Late Night Nonsense
Was falling asleep for the 4ish hours that we’d have when all of a sudden there was a loud pounding on my door at 2:30AM. I got changed again and opened the door to find some of the hotel staff waiting to return our passports to us (which they told us they’d keep and give to us the next morning). Ridiculous. So instead of 4 hours of sleep (which was already rough), basically only was going to get about 2 hours of sleep.
Vibe Check
2 parts joy
1 part sadness – for lack of sleep
1 part anger – for guide nonsense
1 part disgust – for guide nonsense
Feedback
Leave a comment or question if you have any thoughts! Anything you want to know about as we go around the world? Any things you want to share as feedback, or any images that particularly spoke to you. I’ll try to read all of them as time permits!
Matti 
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