Home Again - Final Entry

Well- I'm home now and wanted to round out my blog with a few notes on my final days.

First of all- my last day at BITS was Diwali which is an important holiday. There are lots of lights everywhere and what they call firecrackers. They seem too big to me to be firecrackers- more like fireworks that happen to stay on the ground. I actually got hit on the leg by one. Last year someone ended up in the hospital. Photos are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/vickirwilliams/Diwali

I flew home out of Delhi which is about a 5 hour drive from BITS. Given my past experience with cars here, I wanted to leave early enough to give myself enough time for several breakdowns along the way. Luckily, nothing happened with the car and I got to Delhi with lots of time to kill. So, I went to Jantar Mantar with is an ancient observatory. It was quite cool so I'm glad I was able to see it. Photos from there and along the way to Delhi are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/vickirwilliams/OnTheWayHome

My flight home was scheduled to leave a little before midnight. We boarded the plane and started out toward the runway, and then we just sat there for a while. The pilot came on after a little bit and explained that we were not being cleared to take off and we might need to reroute the flights. One of the flight attendants later told me that when the traffic control tower said they wouldn't clear us to take off for Newark- they had suggested we fly to Pakistan instead! Eventually the compromised on a plan that would take us to Laguardia (NYC), but we had to go back to the gate to get more fuel. The pilot explained what was going on and said it wouldn't take 15 minutes tops to top off the fuel tank. And hour later, he got on to explain that we were waiting for the gas truck. All in all- with the disagreement about where we should fly to and waiting for fuel- it was 3:30 am before we took off - not a fun way to start a 16 hour flight. But- it all ended well. They were able to file an amended flight plan for Newark after we left Indian air space and I made my connection to Dullas with minutes to spare. Hurray! I can't wait to see everyone!