With that stress gone, I boarded and we all flew from Kenya and landed in the dark in Qatar, a country right next to Saudi Arabia. Exiting our aircraft from stairs onto the tarmac with the roaring of aircraft idling and taking off all around us in the black of the night, we were loaded onto a bus and taken to the terminal, only to be quickly returned by bus once again to climb stairs to the doors of our massive Boeing 777.
But soon enough, armed with our bags and prepared to leave the security of the airport, about 20 of us said goodbyes to the rest of our squad flying to various places around India and entered into the thick, dark, eerie Delhi smog to catch a bus that hopefully would take us to the right train station. We found the bus an airport information desk told us to take, and about a half hour later were dropped off onto the side of the road. The bus driver told us to walk and simply pointed in a direction up a narrow dirt alleyway dimly lit by the glow of the city.
Little did we know the station was about a kilometre away. But we all donned our backpacks, our big packs on our backs and our small carry ons on our chests, and walked through a maze of construction projects, barking stray dogs, people staring and others cooking over small fires, all as if they had forgotten to sleep for the night. Periodically asking directions hoping people really were understanding our English, they’d point in a general direction through the next part of the maze. Finally arriving at the train station, several people were sleeping on the ground; even a woman with her children were huddling together on the concrete as if to simply weather the night.
With about 45 minutes before our train arrived, we waited in line for our train tickets. And just as the train signaled its arrival began rolling into the station, we finally were able with tickets in hand to make our way up and down large flights of stairs and eventually down the long cement platform to the our car at the far end. Climbing in to another past century as we boarded the ancient train, I fell asleep just as the sunlight began to illuminate the thick air outside. The last sight I remember seeing was an old man upset at a teenage girl who seemed to be lost walking in between the tracks of our train and the one beside us. Yet he kindly helped her up the vertical ladder just before the horn sounded and we pulled away from Delhi.
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