Another Long Journey

Although I know the flight from Seattle to Delhi is long, I haven't found a great way to reduce the toll on my body.  Perhaps if I fly business class?  But it is difficult to justify the much higher cost of business class.

Sunrise over Greenland

This time it has taken me about 27 hours to get from Seattle to Delhi.  An hour was added to the trip by a delay in the departure of the flight from Frankfurt.  Apparently, the plane took more time than expected to clean.  Seats on airplanes seems to be getting smaller too.  I don't remember feeling as cramped and confined as I did on these flights.

Arrival at 2:30 am at the Delhi airport took a long time too. An ETA/e-visa is supposed to speed things along, but I still had to wait 45 minutes to get through immigration.

But all is well.  I have a brief, relaxing stay at an airport hotel and then it is back to the airport for a 1 hr. 20-minute flight from Delhi to Dharamsala.

Temperatures in Delhi are expected to reach 102-106 degrees F today.

Time to Travel

It's always tricky to know how much time it will take to get to the airport, check in, go through security and find a departure gate. The start of my journey to India has gone remarkably smooth: 45 min car ride to the airport,  3 minutes to check in at the airline desk, 3 minutes through security using tsa pre, a 5 minutes to find the departure gate.  

Let's hope everything else goes so well.

New Technology Ahead

There is a bit of new travel technology in store for me on this trip.  First, to enter the airport terminal in Delhi, travelers must now show a QR code to enter.  In the past, a boarding pass was required to enter.  My airline sent me the QR code that can be printed or downloaded to my phone.

Second, the Delhi airport is now using an expedited biometrics process during the immigration process. A person with an Electronic Travel Authorizations (ETA), which I have, can use an Automated Biometric Kiosk Machine at pre-immigration areas.  This is supposed to reduce the time it takes to go through immigrations.  We'll see!