Orby Online

Monday began like most others: I woke up earlier than I would have otherwise wanted to and didn’t eat enough breakfast. But instead of being just another day, Monday was quite different. I changed continents, hemispheres, and cultures. I have to convert my dollars to rupees, push my body’s internal clock forward twelve and a half hours, remember to always ask for drinks without ice, never drink the water, and think of as many humorous uses of the word “naan” as possible.

It’s a naan-issue, really.

I’ve been sent to New Delhi, India (in the suburb of Gurgaon, specifically) for work, and it’s certainly shaping up to be an interesting trip.

My itinerary was pretty simple: a four hour flight from Seattle to Chicago, sit around for five hours, and then a direct fifteen hour flight to New Delhi from Chicago.

Although Seattle/Chicago was as uneventful as could be expected, the layover in Chicago was at least mildly entertaining. I was admiring the massive Boeing 777 being prepped to chariot me 7500 miles across the world when a sizable amount of water started spraying out from the plane underneath its tail. Quickly afterwards, the throngs of children noticed the spray and began shouting “Momma! The plane is peeing! The plane is peeing! Look!”

I don’t think the leak was normal, as the ground crew walked back to the leak and proceeded to stare at it for a good twenty minutes. Eventually, three men drove up in a truck, climbed up into the plane, and managed to get the plane to stop peeing. That, or its bladder was empty.

A few hours later, boarding began on what the kids now referred to as the “pee plane”. I started the flight expecting to be able to sleep through much of the journey, hoping for a deep slumber that would pause only briefly in the interest of eating. I was wrong.

Our flight path took us up through Canada, over Greenland, Across the top portion of Sweden, down through Russia, through Afghanistan (no, we weren’t shot at, but I did notice that we increased both our speed and altitude when crossing the country), across Pakistan, and finally to New Delhi, India. After surviving the flight, I honestly believe that all of the mild to medium turbulence in the entire world is collected along this route. We didn’t have any of the roller coaster style turbulence, but were subjected to the type of constant mild bumps and shakes that make going to sleep impossible.