After what seemed to be a fairly long wait – almost 6 hours – we boarded our Singapore Airlines 787 to Delhi. Never seen so many young kids on a plane. It was more of a creche than a flight. Couple of screamers of course, and given that it was 3 in the morning and we’d been going for 24 hours, it didn’t help the disposition much.
Sat on the tarmac for almost an hour while they walked up and down the aisles yelling two names. Yep, two people checked in and lodged luggage, but never fronted, so eventually we sat there whilst they found and off loaded their baggage. Don’t know about you, but I can kind of understand somebody not fronting for their flight – maybe a late transfer, or they came down sick. But what I can’t understand is where the flight attendants thought that they would find two extra people on a plane with only two empty seats. Maybe in the luggage racks! Surely if they were sitting in the wrong seat, some other passengers would be complaining.
Anyway, finally got airborne, and grabbed a few hour of sleep while we could.
Arrived in Delhi roughly on time, and somebody was actually waiting for us at the airbridge to take all those going to Almaty (who you might remember don’t have boarding passes) to the transfer desk to issue them. Well, the airline staff weren’t at the desk when we got there, and weren’t going to arrive for at least an hour so we cooled our heels and scorched our tongues on scalded coffee from the only food cart in the district. There were 12 of us in the same situation, and nobody needed to be an Einstein to work out that this was our tour group. Got the feeling that we are still amongst the youngees in the group – thought we’d be past that by now.
Finally got our boarding passes, but the girl was a bit reluctant to give me one as my passport was a different shade of blue to Mandy’s! Through to security and then departures where we cooled our heels for another 4 hours. On the bright side, there was a McDonalds and a KFC there – maybe our last for a while.
Free wifi at the airport, which we intended to use instead of going to the trouble and expense of getting mobile coverage for a few hours. However, when signing up for free wifi, they send a PIN number to your mobile number for verification purposes! Welcome to India.
Left on time for Kazakhstan – Borat country. Took a very long, semi-circular route to the west of the Himalayas – not sure if we were avoiding the direct route in order to avoid bumping into K2, or to avoid bumping into the Chinese military near the border. Hard to tell up here. But thankfully we turned north before we got to Kabul, and eventually found our way to Almaty. Spectacular scenery on the way. It’s not often that you are flying along next to the Himalayas which appear to be taller than you.
Met our tour guide upon arrival, changed some money, and were taken to our lovely hotel. Almost 40 hours door to door, so Mandy is rather tired, and we bailed on the group tea, but had dinner in the hotel restaurant.
Plaza Hotel Almaty
wow those mountains – on my wish list this is