In Delhi

Made it to Delhi...the flight landed early!

A bit of travel advice for the next time you are in New Delhi.  It is not difficult to make your way to International Terminal 3 from the Domestic Terminal 1.  Just check in at a desk outside the terminal (you must show your old boarding pass and onward ticket) and walk a half block to a shuttle bus.  The buses leave every 20 minutes.  Terminal 3 is about a 10-15 minute bus ride from Terminal 1.

And one caution:  security will not let you into terminal 3 until 6 hours prior to your flight.  However, there is a waiting area if you are more than 6 hours early (100 rupees).

I had an interesting experience getting to the airport terminal hotel where I am now spending a few hours before the flight to Tokyo.  A hotel porter came down to meet me and escort me through additional security to get to the hotel.  At one checkpoint on the way to the hotel security X-rayed my bag.  A security officer asked me if I had a pair of scissors.  I said I did have one very small pair of scissors.  They asked me to show it to them so I opened my bag and found the scissors.  The officer then told me that I could not bring the scissors into the hotel.  They asked if I had anything like a knife, and the only thing I could think of was a reflex hammer I brought to show the monks. When I showed it to security, they were a bit puzzled because they did not know what it was.  I said it was not really sharp and then I demonstrated how it was used.  They said I could keep the hammer, but not the scissors.

The hotel porter then took the scissors from me, walked into a security storage closet and said I would get the scissors back tomorrow.  We finally made it up to the hotel where I checked in.  The same hotel porter took me to my room. As he put my bags in my room, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the scissors!  He never put them in the security storage area.