Our Trip to India: a necessary introduction

The last requirement of Trent's MBA program was an international trip to meet with business owners and analysts in other countries.  His class voted on the destinations: one industrialized country (Singapore) and one developing country (India), and they had a schedule full of lectures and meetings and some sightseeing too.

And to celebrate the end of a long 2 years, I planned on meeting him in New Delhi, India for a week's vacation after he wrapped up his school trip.  Trent's parents graciously offered to watch our kids and were the biggest advocates for us taking advantage of this opportunity.

As if going on a trip to celebrate the end of Trent's MBA program wasn't exciting enough, we had a little extra drama to keep things interesting.

As I was packing on the day before I left (no, I hadn't saved it all until that day; I'd been gathering things for weeks), I couldn't find my passport and realized that it was still at the visa office being processed with my visa.  What?!!!  I was supposed to have gotten it back a week prior, but in the midst of preparing everything else, I hadn't realized that I didn't have the single most important thing for the entire trip!  They had been waiting on me to send them some more paperwork, but had already sent me an email saying that everything was complete and being processed.  (My fault for not following up; their HUGE fault for sending that final email.)  I was supposed to leave the next day from Austin at 6:30pm.  My stomach was in knots.

I'll go ahead and tell you now that I did end up getting a same-day visa and making my flight, but if you want to read all the amazing things that made that happen, I made a list for you:

Miracle #1: I discovered this problem at 4:30pm and still had 30 minutes before the visa processing office closed to beg and plead and ask how to get a rush visa.

I was told flat out repeatedly by the visa rep that it would be impossible to get one the same day because according to his calendar, the morning appointment slots were already booked.  My only hope was to do a walk-in later in the day and hope for a Friday processing, delaying my trip by 1 day (and a lot of money in change fees).

Miracle #2: I got on the computer myself and found an opening at 9:40am.

Miracle #3: My father-in-law Greg offered to drive me down to Houston (which, by the way, is just 1 our of 5 visa offices in the country), so I wouldn't have to worry about parking at each place.  So, we left at 4:30am to get to Houston, factoring in rush hour.  (More miracles: not horrible traffic, finding the office without any trouble)

Miracle #4: I met with the visa processing place and my situation was declared an emergency.  I could pick my visa up directly from the consulate at 2:30pm. Yay, even better than I had hoped!  Now we just had to wait at the consulate's until then.  

Unfortunately, getting my visa at 2:30 still did not allow enough time for me to make it back to Austin to catch my flight at 6:30.

Miracle #5: My flight from Austin to Qatar had a connection in Houston.

Unfortunately, the travel agency said "no way could I skip the first leg of my trip without paying astronomical change fees and same-day fares."  I thought of driving to the airport and groveling directly at the airlines' counter, but it would have been a 45-minute drive there (and then 45 minutes back to get the visa), obliterating any chance of making it back to Austin if the airlines still said no.

Miracle #6: Since my cell phone was dead, my friend Mindy phoned around and found that Qatar Airways had a downtown office only 3 miles from the consulate's office where we were waiting, so we zipped right over.

Miracle #7: The flight attendants were in a happy mood and thought it was hilarious that I was stressing out about trying to get back to Austin in time to fly back to Houston, so they marked the segment as "flown" and charged me nothing for the change.  I would be able to check-in at the airport in Houston to start my trip.

Miracle #8: I had absolutely no problems checking in and getting on the plane.  Only then did I breathe a big sigh of relief, along with many grateful prayers.  I had no idea I would be so happy to begin my 14-hour flight across the ocean.

I don't even know where to begin to thank all the people that helped out on that one day.  It made for a very exciting beginning to our trip.  After all that, I didn't even have time to worry about getting food poisoning or running into pickpockets, or suffering from jet lag or seeing everything on our itinerary or getting bedbugs from the hotels or any of the other things I had been concerned about.  I was just happy to be on my way!