Sahara Hotel, Bombay

We arrived in our room at 8:15am. After a great amount of difficulty I was able to make a call to Jet Airways to confirm our flight to AMD. In the back of my mind there was still a doubt whether or not we would get on that flight. The phone in our room was broken or could not call out (see this audio blog entry from Jim Rogers who is a very successful New York based businessman (on Fox news channel every Saturday morning) and he visited dozens of countries in a car around the world and made extensive observations in India; I've found many parallels to his experiences in India; I'll link to his audio or web blog when appropriate); I had to ask the operator to place the calls for me. She couldn’t understand what I was saying and I could not understand what she was saying either. Somehow I managed to place a call and Jet Airways informed me that they needed more information such as my ticket number from Air India. I gave all that information and hoped everything would be okay.

After a quick shower we were ready to get some food; Air India gave us food vouchers for “light breakfast” for the hotel restaurant. We made our way to the restaurant and found out that they had a breakfast buffet that we were eligible for. The restaurant was decent and had mix of Indian and western breakfast items along with juices, coffee and tea. We took our time at the restaurant and relaxed a bit. I can see the domestic airport from the restaurant’s window. Everyone felt better after a decent meal and a shower.

We made our way to the lobby to check out earlier than planned. I wanted to be at the airport to make sure we were confirmed on that flight. After spending 12 hours in India it was obvious that nothing gets done at the same speed as US; Everything becomes a project. Sure enough, the clerk at the front desk could not check us out; he had to call someone to reboot the computer; after about 15 minutes of fiddling with the computer he told us that we owed nothing and we were good to go. I was trying to keep an eye on my son who was running around the hotel lobby.