Last week has been quite an adventure. If I have to sum it up in one sentence, I would say, I ran in the cold and traveled 20 hours on a flight with my toddler, across two continents with extreme weather differences!
But, where’s the fun in that? So let me start at the beginning. It was the week I decided to start running again, in another endeavor to get in shape doing something I used to enjoy previously. I even managed to find time to do it, but alas! the weather decided to get extremely chilly, just when I started with my Nike app training! And I don’t mean normal UK winters- because I had gone and bought some nice running gear that would keep me warm, but snowing-chilly-bite-your-face kind of cold. I still thought of all the great runners and people who are so brave and tireless and managed to keep up with my beginners 1-mile runs for the first 4 days, but I just couldn’t brave it on the last few days, when we had the yellow weather warning in UK..sigh. So here are my statistics and some pictures 😀
First leg of travel- distance covered: 7 miles
Mode of travel: Mostly running
Weather conditions: Awfully cold! Brrrr
Fun fact: My toddler wanted to explore the snow on all the days I was feeling colder than usual <roll eyes> and I managed to walk to office on all 5 days of the week!! Despite the weather warning 😀
The second leg of travel was harrowing in a completely different way. We had to fly from UK to India, to spend time with the families. It is quite normal to have a hectic week just before you travel, everything usually goes haywire, there is more work in office than usual, people are panicking about finishing deliverables, toddler decides to be unnervingly uncooperative and not sleep early or even on time on either of the days, packing left till last minute, etc etc. But, when you have added mishaps putting a damper in your travel plans, now that’s stuff made for fun stories to tell later on. For us, it was the sudden turn of the weather conditions in UK. Within a few hours storm Emma had disrupted life in Scotland and our worse fears came true when schools, nurseries, offices and highways were announced to be shut on Friday- which was the day we had to travel to Heathrow airport and catch our flight. Luckily, our cab driver agreed to pick us up if we left 3 hours earlier than planned. Our flight took off as well, even if it was 2.5 hours later than the time of departure. So we had already spent 6 hours of our travel time, going nowhere! lol..My daughter was quite excited though with the whole thing of white snow everywhere on the roads and trees. We had thought we would miss our connecting flight as well but even they decided to wait and it was a mad rush for a lot of passengers to get through the boarding and security check. To add to all this rushing about, we had to fit in time to change the child’s diaper and to relive myself in the loo!! We had expected a tiring flight and were unsure how our daughter would be for such a long journey, since she hates staying still at one place, but we didn’t do too bad. Nappy changes were quite uneventful though- she complied almost everywhere without much fuss <thank God!>. And the initial stay at the Heathrow airport was made less boring because of the free children’s play area there. But the final part of our journey was not without incident sadly, because one of our bags didn’t make it to India! We had to wait another 2 hours at the airport in Delhi, just to get our complaint across. Just another inconvenience since that bag had all our daughter’s clothes, bottles, shoes, diapers. Note to myself, don’t listen to practical husband and do pack extra child clothes, bottles, shoes, socks, toys in the cabin baggage. Now we have to buy all of that again, because we don’t know how long it will take to get the luggage back. My daughter was jet lagged and really tired with the heat, so she literally zonked off to sleep in her pram and kept sleeping all the way home!
First leg of travel- distance covered: No idea- calculate from UK to India 😀
Mode of travel: Flying, and in the car
Weather conditions: Awfully cold to awfully hot!
Fun fact: Our toddler decided she wanted two seats instead of one, on the plane, and pushed whichever parent was trying to sit beside her, to the floor. It wasn’t fun and we had to swap places so that each of us could get some sleep on the way<yawn> And when we reached Delhi, my daughter kept saying, “so many cars! so many bus! wow” Lol
We don’t have any sight seeing in plan this time, however, we will be traveling to another state in India- Odisha, to meet my parents and extended relatives, in about a week’s time. But I would love to hear about your travel mishap stories..they’re always fun in hindsight..<wink>
And finally, the best surprise of the week, I got this amazing postcard and my first postcard from my pen friend!! Thank you so much Gray!!:)
Starry Eyed Enigma 