Digital BABA

Last January, I received the acceptance to share in a leadership retreat called “Building a Better Asia“. This retreat is a special gathering for participants and former ones from affiliates association of The Nippon Foundation. Yearly, it is held 2 editions. So I was invited for the 2nd of 2008-9. Today we had the opening ceremony and the first sessions, including introduction to Puri’s (Orissa, India) culture, artistic manifestations, ecology and biodiversity.

I remember that when I first came to Japan from Peru, I took the longest trip of my life (24 hours, with just 1 transfer in Los Angeles). Considering that the distance between Japan and India is the third part of trip from Peru, I didn’t worry too much about this journey. Or should I say “adventure”?

From the International Airport of Narita you can find different ways to reach India. As we should meet the other participants in Singapore, my friend Akira booked 2 Singapore Airlines’ tickets. The plan was to depart on February 7th from Narita at 11:30, meet everybody in Singapore, opt for a city tour during the 6 hours transfer, and take the plane to Delhi. Arriving in Delhi, we all should shift to a local airline to Bhubaneswar, and finally 2 hours by bus until the Toshali Resort.

So according to that schedule, I took the Narita Express from Shinjuku station for Narita International Airport. It stopped at Tokyo Station, where Akira caught my train. Since then we would travel together.

We reached Narita on schedule. Made the check-in and boarded on time. The engines started and the plane headed for the departing line (11:45), and then our adventure began. The aircraft braked and the captain told us that the Japanese engineers found sort of problem in the secondary brakes, and requested our patience to them to fix it.

After watching almost 2 movies in this new Airbus 480, the captain announced that unfortunately the problem would take more time so we returned to base, disembarked, and received 2000 yens for lunch. The cabin attendants requested us to return in an hour.

We ate sushi packs and returned by 16:00, however, we should wait until 18:00 to board and depart with 7 hours of delay.

We actually slept all the way until Singapore. After landing at local 23:00 (Tokyo time), we went to the transfer counter, because we lost our flight to Delhi. After 2 hours, we refused a night in Singapore Crown Hotel for the fastest and easiest connection. Thanks to the help of Miss Mary Kanniga (BABA Retreat Secretariat), we could find a flight to Delhi departing at 03:00. The problem was that we would only have 90min to try to catch our scheduled flight from Delhi to Bhubaneswar. If not, the counter officer reserved us in another local airline.  So, we just look for something to eat, and found this spectacular soup restaurant.

With that 90min-rushed-tranfer, we ran to pick up our luggage. Imagine our surprise, when we waited until the last luggage and couldn’t find ours. We were running out of time and looked for the officer in charge. This kind officer did all the arrangements so quickly, that we had 20min to take the domestic flight. She got us a taxi that covered a 30min-distance in 7min. And after running to the final counter, they couldn’t find our flight tickets and again we lost our flight.

How fortunately was to have Akira’s mobile with international roaming. Again, Mary suggested us to buy new tickets. With 6 hours until the next flight and no luggage, we decided to go to the nearest “supermarket”. Akira wanted to ride a tricycle-motor-taxi. So we went to this “supermarket” to buy some underwear, pants, and t-shirts. In some moment, we started to doubt the good intentions of the driver, because he started to do too many turns and passed “pretty ugly” places. Especially, one turn leaded us to a “no-end road”. It was surrounded by tons of garbage and not nice gazes. We did get scared to be stolen or about even worse things. Actually, that route was a shortcut. After 15 minutes, we arrived to a ghetto’s market.

We just tried not to seem surprised or afraid, and started to walk and look for our needs. We took around 2 hours with the shopping. Then we were quite hungry and asked to a smiling tricycle-driver to take us to a very traditional restaurant with delicious Indian food.

After our first decent meal since our departure in Japan, our friendly taxi-driver took us back to the Indira Gandhi Airport. Again our flight delayed for over an hour.

At last, but not the end of this story, we arrived in Bhubaneswar, checked out and find our transportation waiting for us. The driver told us that the ride to the Toshali Sands Resort (Puri, Bhubaneswar) would take around 2 hrs. So we tried to relax and have some sleep, but 1hr 10min later the taxi stopped because a 1km-traffic-jam due to a car accident.

Finally, after 30min we could restart the way to the hotel. Seiji was waiting for us at the main entrance, as well as, Mary and Margaret. We had some salad, chicken and rice for dinner, and a wonderful king-size bed (total trip = 50hrs).