Welcome to Delhi and Dharamsala

Hey all, I made it with no big problems. Just the ususal travel stories but as promised, I did try out the "first class blow up seat" and believe it or not, it was a great ride, just as advertised. Or, it might have been the Ambien that I took just before dinner. In any case, I awoke just in time to catch the wake up call coming into Charles De Gaulle airport. You would have thought I had slept in my own bed!
One bad thing was I lost my headphones so now am without them and have to get a new set.

I caught the Air France flight to Delhi and was lucky enough to have the seat next to me empty. I arrived in Delhi at 10:30 p.m. and went through customs. It reminded me of a scene from Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory. The line up for the customs wound its way all the way to the bottom of the escalator and so there was no place to go. It was like a conveyor belt in a candy factory where the box is full at the end of the line. After some scrambling, the people behind stopped marching in place on the escalator and when I looked back, the others wisely decided to wait at the top, rather than get on and march at the bottom until some floor space cleared up. One wailing baby and a distraught Indian mom singing "jingle bell, jingle bell, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm..." and an hour wait finally put me through the bureaucracy and myriad rubber stamping. I got to the baggage claim and couldn't find my bag but it turned up just as I got into the line to report it missing.

The person from Tibetan Tours met me outside baggage claim without a problem and took me directly to the Singh Sons hotel. Talk about CRAZY!! A few hours and about 6 hours of sleep later, I was picked up and then dropped off (again by Tibetan Tours) to the local airport for the ride to Dharamsala. It was interesting that the women and men go through different screeners and the woman's one is like a dressing room with a fabric curtain. I waited about an hour and then took off for Dharamsala which is about 90 minutes flying time from Delhi.

Here's a photo of the plane to Dharamsala.