The past 8 months have been absolutely hellish in terms of travel. Back in August I was trying to get to India and ended up with a 14 hour stop in Hong Kong as well as having to stay up for 2 days straight just to get off the ground in Vancouver. I whined about this in my India blog back in Sept or something.
Then here’s what happened in terms of pains in the ass about travel. I’m not even going to describe it just put it in point form. Some are small and some are big. Seems like the longer the travel the bigger the problems. Some weird correlation there.
-landed in India late (12 hours) and could not sleep despite being more or less awake for 3 days.It was real hot.
-We went to Mussoorie (9 hours from Delhi), 3 days later back to Delhi to pick up a friend who was coming to visit, next day back to Mussoorie. The air conditioning conked out in the car in 40C degree heat(more than 100F) on the first trip.
-Went touring around in the car and were beset by CD problems, air conditioning problems, tire problems, closed roads for a couple of weeks.
-Trying to get back to Canada from India wasn’t bad except for the over the top security due to the bombings in Mumbai. Plane left a little late from Hong Kong but not bad.
-Trying to get from Vancouver to Saskatoon.Was asked to divert from Calgary to go visit Medicine Hat Alberta-this would have cost me excessively and turn a 5 hour trip into a 14 hour nightmare going on the bus across the frozen prairie in the middle of the night to arrive at about 4AM. No thanks. Some people were mad a little about this.
-Booked a flight on Christmas Eve. Huge snowstorm. Was told via email the first plane would be leaving late and I’d miss the connection. After being on hold for 55 minutes I just canceled the flight. Then I went online to reschedule. Nothing available as Air Canada had canceled about 80 percent of its flights so everyone was scrambling to get on West Jet (the only airline I fly with in Canada). Managed to secure a flight on boxing day (26th).
-Boxing day flight snowstorm. Flight left one hour late and I managed to run for the connection in Calgary. Barely made it. The Westjet counter person , in a very uncharacteristic way was rather nasty at the airport. She must have worked for Air Canada previously.
-Trying to get a bus from Saskatoon to Medicine Hat Alberta. Schedule got me into MH at 2AM-ended up traveling on the frozen prairie in the middle of the night anyways.
-Now trying to get from MH back to Saskatoon and I’ve discovered Greyhound has canceled one of its daily runs and that STC (the Saskatchewan bus company) has canceled the Sunday run from Swift Current (where I have to change buses) to S’toon. Now I have to wait til 5PM, spend the night in SC at a hotel to get a bus tomorrow morning from there.
-I changed my flight reservation twice from S’toon to Van due to stuff coming up here that I was asked to help with. And I am so off put by all this travel crap that I didn’t want to go so soon again anyways. But this cost me 50 bucks each time I changed it. But it was an outstanding seat sale so even with that it’s still 30 percent less than full fare.
-now I have to get my visa for India in order(photos, paperwork, 2 trips to the consulate in Vancouver) as well as try to get a ticket for the first week of March (and not get ripped off by an 800$ commission on it like one travel agent charged me).
There’s way more stuff than this to it but it makes me tired just to think about it.
I am writing this while I am waiting 4 hours for the bus to go to SC and a night at a hotel. Expenses I can do without. And all the luggage handling. With my back and forth travel I’ve become like a freight company for family and friends so usually end up with at least one more suitcase than I can handle comfortably. But shipping and stuff is outrageously expensive so I understand their requests.
And the saga of travel woes continues.
