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Hooray the day is finally here. Left home at midnight after a final pack and rearrange to achieve the all-essential baggage weight. The team met up at Cranwell, everyone gathered in anticipation waiting for the transport. Last chance for kit distribution, cyalume sticks, sweat rags and chocolate (thanks Tony). Excited and tired we all got on the coach and set off for Manchester. At the KLM desk the fun started; don’t you just hate it when a group is in front of you. Our leader had excess luggage so the kind lady offered to weigh all bags and divide between 10. Unfortunately, our deputy thought that the 20kg limit was per bag and not per person so the weigh-in was getting worse by the minute. We finally sweet talked the lovely lady into letting us all check in without paying for excess baggage and off we went to experience the short hop over to Amsterdam and view the Tulip fields as we came into land.
Schipol was a busy airport but there was plenty of shopping to do. We had decided to take some spirits and Cigarettes to share with the porters but it all seemed slightly incongruous with all the death warnings on the cigarette packets. The KLM team were great and the flight to India was made as comfortable as possible with good service, food, and a good film (National Treasure). When we arrived at Delhi at approx 2230hrs local time the immigration was efficient and we followed the directions to the transit lounge to wait for the bus. The temperature was 32 degrees Celsius and the mosquitoes were out in force.
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