Salt Touched

Okay…let’s try and start this at the beginning…

Debark day is always strange, but it seems even stranger when you’re leaving mid-contract.

But wherever you’re leaving from, it’s always supposed to be simple. Exhausting, but simple.The flights are booked and paid for after all, all you have to do is show up at the airport and board.

Always simple…in theory.

I was supposed board the plane in Mexico and fly two back to back long hauls that would put me in Mumbai in the dark hours of the morning. That’s what I was prepared for when I lugged all my luggage out of the room, hugged Amras goodbye, and headed down the gangway.

That, however, is not what occurred.

Halfway through the flight I checked into the onboard wi-fi to write my parents and let the mknow that I was safely on my way; and instead found an email from the crew office of the ship I was soon supposed to be boarding; asking whether or not I was in possession of a visa for admission to India. As no one had informed me that I needed such a visa and I hadn’t required one before when I had come in by sea, the – as it would turn out very unfortunate – answer to the question was “no, I’m afraid not…am I supposed to?”

Ooooh boy…

This led to a flurry of increasingly panicked (While trying not to be panicked) emails fro the duration of the flight between myself, the crew office and the India port agent, which – while I was sitting anxiously in the gate area of the flight that was supposed to take me from Dubai to Mumbai, came to a not so great conclusion:

I couldn’t get on that plane.

At this point, the flight to Dubai had been 14 hours…and I had spent it for the most part watching movies save for about an hour when I fell asleep during Brave.

At any rate, without that visa, I would not be able to enter India, and the visa could not be obtained despite everyone’s efforts to find some kind of work around.

Ultimately they decided that they would reroute me from Dubai to Doha to Sallalah (in Oman), and put me up in a hotel there for two nights and I could pick up the ship on the 17th.

Okay…well, all I can do is go where they tell me…

This then led to the beginning of what may be the most chaotic, stressful, travel experience I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. At this point, I had to make sure that my bags got transferred from the flight they were originally supposed to be on and onto the new set of flights. It took all of my three hour layover to even locate where I was supposed to be to get that accomplished…

I would love to say that I was rock star brave in the face of being lost, disoriented and exhausted in a strange airport and a totally unfamiliar culture, but I wasn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever quite broken broken down that much in front of strangers because of sheer confusion…

All i needed to know was how to transfer my bags from the old flight to the new one, but because I was in a situation that I guess most people don’t usually find themselves in, no one understood what I was trying to say so I kept getting sent in all different directions. Plus the Dubai airport has practically nothing in the way of power outlets, so because I needed to maintain near constant contact with Head Office, all my means of communication were swiftly going flat. Not good, not good at all.

I finally arrived at where I was supposed to be, only to hear the words that no one wants to hear in such a situation:

Ma’am your flight is already closed.

Waterworks. And telling me to remain calm in that situation does not help matters. They wanted to make me pay for my luggage again as well, but they retracted that idea very quickly, perhaps I looked scary, or perhaps it was just the prospect of seeing someone completely collapse in front of them that made them change their minds.

They managed to get my bags rechecked – at least, they said they did – but then informed me of something else that had fallen through the cracks

I can’t put you on this plane if you don’t have a valid method of exit from Sallalah

But…I’m going to a ship, and all of my paperwork says I’m boarding that ship in Mumbai, I already explained this

Then you’ll have to get new papers before you reach Salallah ma’am, or I’m telling you they won’t let you in

Which meant that for the first time ever I had to go against my instinct and pick up one of those terrible credit-card operated plane-to-ground phones that coast upwards of $6US a minute so that I could call the emergency contact line and let them know that I had been rerouted again and that I needed a new copy of my letters of assignment as soon as possible or I was going to be stuck again.

I also called my parents to let them know I was alive.

I would have given anything to call Amras too, but he was still on the ship so there’s no incoming number until I get to a company operated satellite phone.

At this point, I was hoping that my bags had in fact come with me, but having no way of knowing until I got to what I had thought was going to be the last leg.

I was so very tired by this point, and hating the fact that it was an empty seat next to me instead of the person I needed to be sitting in it.

I did not actually end up in Sallalah. Although I did spend an exhausting ten or twelve hours in Doha, which his where I was supposed to be laying over before landing in Sallalah. When I landed in Doha and went through security (again), I made my way to yet another airport gate; by this point they were really all starting to look alike, propped myself up against the wall and plugged into the only outlet available (for which I had to purchase an adapter, don’t ask how much that cost me at airport prices), and checked my email.

Note: at this point I had not slept in approximately 30 or so hours…little did I realize that at that point things were about to get even crazier. This time the chain of emails went like this:

Port Agent: please note, her nationality cannot be granted access without proper clearance

Office: can clearance be obtained?

Agent: no

Emergency Line, Nienna: Shaughnessy is already in the air. We’ll have to wait until she checks in to tell her we’re sending her home

ME: HOME? What do you mean I’m going HOME?

So I call Nienna, and she tells me that yes, unfortunately I would have to go home, as there was no other place to send me. At this point I am so exhausted that I can only barely understand what she was saying; all I knew was that I had been flown halfway around the world, run madly through at least three airports, hadn’t slept and had barely eaten. Once again, I was not feeling a lot like a rock star traveler, just a scared, exhausted girl who wanted to go home.

So I kept talking to Nienna whose ever-thankless job is to clean up these kinds of messes, and she tells me that it’s okay she can put me on a flight home tomorrow night and to hang tight while she finds the details.

I use the intervening time to try and update my family, but while I’m in the midst of doing that the next batch of emails comes in, and they aren’t good.

Apparently there are no hotels available in the entire Qatar peninsula; and they can’t put me in a hotel in a neighbouring country because again – no paperwork.

If I want that flight home, I had to stay at the airport for a full 24 hours.

Okay, so it wasn’t the best circumstance at all, but I hadn’t cracked yet. It took something else that was going to make me crack.

After all, if I was going to be stuck somewhere I needed my luggage, so I trot over to the gate desk for what would have been my flight to Sallalah and ask them to make sure that my luggage gets unloaded from the plane so that it at least stays where I am. The gate attendant reassures me that it won’t be loaded in the first place since I won’t be on the plane, and to just pop back in about twenty minutes and he can let me know where I can go to pick it up. Easy.

Except when I go back the attendant punches a few numbers in. Frowns. Picks up the phone and says something in Arabic that I (obviously) do not understand, and I start to get a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach hat feel an awful lot like panic.

I’m sorry miss, at the moment your luggage can’t be located

!*! CRACK *!*!

No no no, not this too

It’s here miss, it’s just unlocated

Tehre’s a difference between unlocated and lost?

Yes

But his tone says “possibly, probably…hopefully”

Just wait over there ma’am, I’ll come update you in a minute

I wipe my eyes, find a corner and call – not Nienna, not Amras (still couldn’t reach him anyway), but my Mum…who else?

At this point I don’t truly remember a lot except that I know I cried. A lot. Before the tears kind of dried to hiccups.

But…but mum, my life is in those bags, the clothes can be replaced but everything else…everything else.

Shh…they’ll find it, they will honey, they’ll find it

So I trudged all over the Doha following a Qatar airlines representative as he tried to track down my two missing bags. Eventually he told me that they’d almost been located and that I could go through immigration and pick them up in about a half hour on the other side.

Which I did..

Eventually

You see, my luggage was not in that airport.

As it turned out, that luggage had never actually left Dubai in the first place.

Though it took them a while, and several reports, to ascertain that. And I spent the next four or so hours in that baggage service area, watching people come and go and essentially being part of the furniture. Waiting patiently for my luggage to arrive. It was supposed to come in at 5am, I finally got it at 7am.

This gave me an interesting view of human nature. Eventually I swear the staff kind of forgot I was there, which meant I overheard all kinds of interesting inter-office drama (apparently one counter-attendant did not think much of the other’s management style) and also got to see just how impatient people can be. I saw one person completely freak out because basically the staff couldn’t break their rules for him. After he stormed of f I went up and gave them chocolate. I’m pretty sure they didn’t actually want it or eat it, but I wanted to be nice, or at least seen to be nice since I’d been pretty worked up when I got there myself. Honey is trappier than acorns, and besides I thought the counter clerks were nice, they even checked to try and find a hotel for me when they found out that I had no where to stay.

They were, sadly, unsuccessful, just as Nienna, Flora and the others at the emergency office had been. So once I got my bags, I had no real choice but to proceed on through arrivals. At this point I’ll admit that 48 hours plus (and yes, it had been that long at this stage), hours awake was starting to catch up with me. I stopped at the check in desk for Emirates air and politely explained my situation: that I couldn’t leave the airport, and my flight wasn’t until 11:30pm and was there somewhere I could leave my luggage for the duration?

Nope, no early check-in

Any luggage lockers?

Nope.

Asked at the information desk, no chance there either. And I also found this particular airport, outside of the baggage service desk, didn’t have much in the way of any sympathy

So, with not much in the way of options, I tried to find a comfortable way to settle down, but luggage and purposely uncomfortable chairs don’t make the best bed. Plus, airports are not the best thing to try and sleep in anyway.

I ended up sending an unashamedly desperate email to Nienna’s colleague Tinúviel, who had been helping me since Nienna went off shift a few hours earlier – saying in essence that I really wasn’t sure that I could do this after all. She responded – obviously feeling terrible – that I was going to have to, as there was still no other option that they’d been able to find.

You can keep talking to me if it helps

I’m just so tired

I know, I’ve thrown myself on the port agent again, maybe he can find you something. You can check the airport hotel again, see if they have a cancellation.

So I tromped up and down the airpot trying to find this hotel, but there’s nothing. As it turns out this particularly ridiculous airport had its hotel before the arrivals terminal, and once you come out you can’t get back to it.

How silly is that?

It was then that something else hit me. I was in the Middle East. Talk about being in a foreign culture. I was a lonely, scared, Caucasian woman, a western woman, essentially stranded in a middle eastern airport. Even though I was conservatively dressed, it didn’t help me not to stand out, and you get more scared and paranoid when you’ve sleep deprived. I had come to that point where I was so tired I was cold. And I was suddenly aware that the reason I was not comfortable was because I didn’t feel safe. Though that wasn’t something I was willing to truly look at until after the fact.

I think I only managed to stay somewhat put together because of my parents, Amras, and Silver, who were writing me almost more than Tinúviel and her colleagues were, and amongst them all it was hard to tell who was more worried for me.

Finally Tinúviel got totally fed off on my behalf

This is ridiculous, look why don’t I put you on the below, it’s longer but you’ll be home tomorrow still.

I looked at the flight details and yet again picked up the phone. Once we figured out luggage fees and such, she mentioned Heathrow. Wait…Heathrow?

Wait, am I going to London Ontario, or London UK?

London UK, you’ll stay at the hotel there and long haul back to Canada the next afternoon.

Am I allowed to tell you I love you Tinúviel?

You are. I kind of love you too right now. You’re just about my kid’s age so..

You’ve adopted me for the day?

Kind of. We all just feel so awful for you. Poor girl, none of this is your fault.

I know.

Okay sweetie. Good luck.

For the first time in ages, it was off to London for me. It was only a 6 hour flight, of which I remember little because I slept 4 hours of it. 4 hours in what was at that point nearly 70 hours including all the time changes. Anyway, since I did sleep somewhat on the plane, I was able to be relatively cognisant when I landed in Heathrow.

It had been nearly 9 years since I last set food on British soil, but I felt my heart lighten somewhat walking down the terminal hallway. Of all the places they could have sent me , they sent me here. To London, to my ‘snowglobe’, where even though I’ve not set foot there for so long, everything seemed familiar. Where I not only didn’t stand out, I could almost feel at home. Even the accent was comforting.

All that kept going through my head was a line from Bedknobs and Broomsticks “is this London?” “’Course it is, can’t you smell that lovely sooty ‘ir?”

8 years later even standing in an airport immigration line up, London still feels the same. And, even in my slightly delirious, sleep deprived state, it felt good to be back with her.

It felt like it took forever for me to get to the hotel, but eventually I did make my way there, only to find

I’m sorry Miss Brookes, we don’t have a reservation for you

No, no no, this can’t be happening. It can’t.

Miss please, please, is there anything we can do to help?

And the whole story came out, and you’ve never seen desk clerks so sympathetic. The manager dealt with me personally, making all the phone calls – including the long distance ones – brought me water and kleenix, hooked up my phone when it died, they did everything they could do – but to no avail, no reservation.

Flora was livid when I called her with the news

Shaughnessy sweetie, you’re not home YET?

No, and they can’t…they can’t find my reservation at the Hilton

Hang on Shaughnessy, I’ll fix this for you, I promise.

And she did. As it turns out someone at the reservation company had made a typo in the email they sent me and put the right hotel name but the wrong terminal number. There are two hotels by the same name at airport.

It was a painfully long hike to terminal 5 where the proper hotel was located, but at least when I got there they checked me straight into a room, where I promptly ordered room service, emailed my respective loved ones to let them know that I was in fact alive and mostly well, and then eased myself into the most well-earned hot bath ever.

Or at least prepared to, because at that moment the phone rang. I have no idea how Amras smooth talked his way through the concierge, as I hadn’t told him my room number, but I have never been so grateful to hear his voice.

After that the night is a bit of a blank because I slept for twelve hours.

In the morning when I was jarred awake by the alarm I made my way back to the terminal in what I thought was plenty of time. Only to find myself dismayed when I looked up at the departure board and found that my airline wasn’t listed.

This was not good.

I asked for clarification at the nearest information desk, to find that yes I was at the wrong terminal – not only that I had been at the right terinal and moved on to the wrong one because no-one had told me otherwise, and therefore figured that naturally the flight left from the same terminal I had arrived in, as is usually the case. Unfortunately I forgot how massive Heathrow is.

So not only was I in the wrong place, but because of the rather ridiculous scheduling of the “express” train that connects the terminals – which stupidly runs only every 15 minutes – there was no way I could get to the right place in time. So another overseas phone call another, reroute, and I end up – finally – on a through flight to Vancouver, at least on that flight I was gifted with great seat-mates. However, a note to the seriously selfish family across the aisle from me:

If you book an aisle seat and elect not to use it for whatever reason, for example if the middle seat of your row is empty and you want to use that instead, then you FORFIET use of that aisle seat. YOU DO NOT GET TO USE BOTH SEATS WHEN YOU PAID FOR ONE! You paid for one seat, period end of story. It’s a full flight kid, we would all like “an extra seat to sleep” but you didn’t pay for it so essentially you’re stealing it. Why should you get to cheat the rules? Especially if there is someone who has requested to be moved because she knows she has a tendency to get claustrophobic on long haul flights! Move into the seat you paid for and put the child next to the actual empty seat in the middle, don’t hog the aisle seat on a full flight and not actually SIT IN IT.

Impolite selfish people.

Anyway, that aside, the flight home was lovely, which is a blessedly nice situation compared to my first flight of this mess (my first flight I was a woman sitting next to a very very stereotypical Indian gentleman who was just flat out rude and treated me like some kind of servant). My seatmates on the final flight to Vancouver were great, shared snacks and stories and actually even managed to laugh. Made the 10 hours go wonderfully quickly.

Let’s see here, things I have learned about various airlines in this debacle:

Kindest Staff: Qatar Airlines, by a long shot. Helped me find my luggage, let me hang out in their office for hours, rebooked my flight without question, and checked my bags through to Victoria when they really didn’t have to.

Best Entertainment: Emirates air, 2000 movies free. Hands down awesome

Best Food: Also Emirates, through British Airways comes close

Worst Passengers: Emirates, cultural thing, and I certainly don’t hold it against them

Most comfortable: British Airways, even in economy

Best Airport: Heathrow, by a long long shot

Worst Airport: Qatar. No luggage, no lockers, no sympathy, no proper signage, no easily approachable customer service

Other stats for this crazy journey:

Times through security: At least 7, possibly 8

Airports visit: 7

Hotels: 1

Time in Flight: over 30 hours

Times Gotten Lost: countless

Bags damaged: one

Flights taken: 6

When I finally landed in Victoria I stood at the baggage carousel watching everyone else collect their things and depart, with that now familiar sinking feeling in my tummy..

No, no surely not.

But the last bags came up the drop ramp and mine were not among them. I would have laughed, but I was too tired. To be so very close, and still have something go wrong.

I dutifully reported the loss, filled out the delayed baggage paperwork for immigration, and got on my flight home, where I filled out another missing luggage report.

It should be delivered this evening with any luck.

And as for me, I’m safely at home, tired, achy and slightly dazed, but at least home…

Mostly in one piece

I think…