so we staggered home at about 2am, EST, Monday Dec 18, relieved to be home!!

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home :-)

We were originally supposed to halt overnight in Chicago and arrive this afternoon, but after six weeks of staying in various places and lugging our suitcases around, we decided to slog it through and come home instead of staying in yet another hotel room for yet another night away.

Our marathon journey home began at 1.30 pm EST Saturday, so we pretty much had a 36-hour journey :-) Funnily enough, though, with the time zones involved, we travelled all 36 hours on ONE day - Sunday:

just past midnight, Sunday morning, India time: we arrive at Madras (sorry, CHENNAI) airport for our British Airways flight to London.
4.30 am, Sunday, India time: We take off from India … bye bye India, it’s been all too real!
9.00 am, Sunday, UK time: After a TEN-AND-HALF-HOUR flight, we arrive at London’s Heathrow airport. We had the wonderful experience of being in a cabin that had at least 6 crying babies/toddlers, who kept their parents (and us) up for most of the ten hours.
11.30 am, Sunday, UK time: We get our bags out of baggage claim, rebook our Monday Hartford flight to Sunday night instead, then meet my sister and her family, who were wonderful to bring our extra suitcase down to London so that we could bring it home (don’t ask… we didn’t realize European/Asian flights have a much stricter weight limit than US flights, so we ended up starting our vacation with too much luggage and had to leave a suitcase behind with my sister in the UK five weeks ago)
2.30 pm, Sunday, UK time: We board our United Airlines flight to Chicago, and for the first time in several weeks we’re back amongst Americans! Yay for friendly American voices, charmingly self-deprecating American humor, and for the wonderful American courtesy of NOT STARING at foreigners!
3.30 pm, Sunday, UK time: We takeoff from London for Chicago.
6.00 pm, Sunday, Chicago time: After an 8.5 hour flight we land in Chicago and have a wonderfully smooth time through immigration and customs. We then hustle our bags through another check-in to make our Hartford connection flight, then we bundle ourselves through security ONE MORE TIME, and THEN we call our friend Gary Davis, who was picking us up the next day afternoon. When we told him we were arriving at midnight instead, he kindly rearranged his plans, but when we learned that he was recovering from being sick, we threatened him with bodily harm (to him) if he showed up at the airport.
8.15 pm, Sunday, Chicago time: We get to the gate with plenty of time for boarding, but I do the O’Hare sprint down to the nearest hotdog stand to get two Chicago-style hotdogs that we hungrily scarf down, pickles and peppers and all. Ahhhhhhhhh… bliss :-) I’ve missed Chicago-style hotdogs - I would get one everytime I connected through O’Hare on my work trips!
8.45 pm, Sunday, Chicago time: We takeoff on the LAST flight of our 15-flight marathon vacation.
11.45 pm, STILL Sunday, EST: We land at homebase, Hartford-Springfield Bradley International Airport!!! WAAAHOOOO!!!!!

This morning we staggered out of bed, jet-lagged but so wonderfully happy to be home! We had brunch at our favorite breakfast place, The Roadhouse, and have been spending most of the day in a living prayer of thanksgiving. We are giving thanks for the big things (arriving home safely, smoothly, etc), but also for the small things (being able to brush our teeth with tap water without worrying about health effects… roads that actually have lane markings… drivers that don’t honk every second… you know, the small things)…

Some statistics:

Flights: 15
Beds slept in: 14
Hotels: 9
Cruise ships: 1
Submarines: 1
Hare Krishna guesthouse stays: 1 (seriously, it was wild… ask us about it sometime!)
Bellydance shows: 2
Alexis in major seas: 3 (Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean)
Major cities visited: 6 (London, Cairo, Dubai, Delhi, Bombay, Madras)
Major Family Meltdowns: 1
Diaorrhea episodes: too many to mention

SOOOOOOOOOOOO glad to be home :-)

More thoughts later…. jet-lag first…