Better late than never….

The final installment of our India trip !!…

The flooding in Dubai had disrupted numerous flights,  people were waiting for days for flights, many sleeping on the floor at the airport, but our flight showed as on time until, naturally enough, we were nearly at the airport. Then of course it changed to cancelled.

We were in an odd situation. Emirates was refusing to fly anyone with connecting flights through Dubai, but as ours was a 4 day stopover that apparently didn’t count and we were classed as terminating in Dubai so could fly to there.

So we joined the queue at Mumbai airport (push and shove) and began the process of the Indian window queue system to find out what we had to do. Window 1 told us to use window 2 , right next to him, who told us to use window 3, again right next to her, but she was wonderfully efficient. She told us our flight had been cancelled but we could get the last flight heading to Dubai in 30 minutes if we wanted to. So we quickly checked in, took Tilly to the  X ray, where a small ledger was dutifully filled in to say she’d been checked and then she was handed to a porter who looked about as enthusiastic as a tortoise. 

Normally, I insist on accompanying Tilly until she vanishes on the oversized baggage belt, but we simply hadn’t got enough time to do that. Tilly had to go half way across the airport so I handed the porter a hefty tip and hoped this would encourage him not to loose our Tilly. Mumbai has a horrendous record on missing bags, even the government has criticised it!

We set off for our gate and met runners, looking out for stragglers, telling us to run for the gate as the plane was about to go, so about 45 minutes after arriving at the airport for our flight in what we thought was 4 hours time, we were airborne.

The flight was uneventful and we landed in Dubai to be greeted by a mountain of missing bags. Every available space in the baggage hall was full up with them – somewhere around 30,000 of them.

We didn’t think Tilly had a hope of flying with us but were a bit surprised when neither Tilly nor our luggage arrived.  There were irate people everywhere, many getting cross with the staff, who were incredibly patient and polite. We eventually got to register Tilly as missing along with our bag and headed to our hotel with our carry ones, which Linda had fortunately packed with everything we would need for our 3 nights here.  Good planning!

Although we saw absolutely no evidence of any flooding or damage from it, the airport had been flooded and many of the streets in Dubai had been closed with floods.

So we had a couple of days to wander around  which was fun, but it’s really not our cup of tea.  We enjoyed the manmade lakes near the incredibly tall Burj Khalifa and the fountain shows to music, but weren’t keen on all the shopping malls. We’re not shopaholics and both found the sheer size and scale of the shopping centres soul destroying.  Its probably an age thing!  Having said that it was a nice break, hugely expensive, especially compared to India and immaculately clean, but we were constantly aware we were missing Tilly.

On the third day Emirates advised people to come to the airport to look for their bags as they were so overwhelmed, (100,000 bags now piled in the baggage hall)  they had no idea what was where or who it belonged to, so we spent an hour or two back in the baggage hall checking for Tilly and our holdall. No luck there. So dutifully checked with the staff that they had all our details and what would happen if our bags didn’t arrive whilst we were in Dubai.

This itself was confusing for them as they weren’t flying connecting passengers,  yet thats what they said we were, the Indians shouldn’t have checked us in apparently, but hey ho, too late for that now.

Whilst doing all this and chatting to the very helpful staff, Tilly amazingly rolled up on a trolley with a baggage handler and looked none the worse for her latest adventure! There were a few tears and bit of a hug the box moment from Linda.

Our other bag was still missing, with many of the bits for Tilly inside, pedals, cranks, rotors, saddles etc and the airports automated system monitoring our bags told us both Tilly and our bag were still lost but there was nothing more we could do apart from hope our bag would eventually turn up.

So, after a sort of relaxing time in Dubai, the next day, the airport had started to fly passengers out and we checked in for our scheduled flight home with a boxed Tilly frame, minus our main bag.

A week later both our bags still showed as missing, which didn’t fill us with confidence  when our holdall suddenly turned up with a van driver in Ipswich, looking very bashed and damaged, but nonetheless everything was there.

Our Indian adventure was over and we were both now freezing in the UK’s wonderful weather thinking why hadn’t we just cycle home instead…… Perhaps nextime !