Denmark to India

When we arrived back in Denmark it was still the same dull gray color sky with some very light drizzle. I hate that type of weather by the way. We spent some time with Kirsten's family and going out here and there at night. We shopped for flights to India. I wanted to fly somebody high class like SAS or Singapore Airlines but we were frugal and ended up finding a flight from Copenhagen to Bombay on Air India.

Just before we left Denmark the sun came out one day. The entire country went outdoors and soaked up sun. Most of the Danes were fair skinned with blond hair, blue eyes and with very white skin from lack of sun exposure. While the lack of sun may be healthy according to dermatologists, the Danes make up for it by going out and getting seriously sun burned when the sun does finally come out. That is what we did. It was almost Christmas and we went to Den Gamle By again the old town park in Aarhus. Then we went home and sang carols around the christmas tree decorated with real burning candles.

We followed that up with a feast of food and drinks. There was rice pudding with almonds, roast pork, fish, roast goose, cherry wine, chicken dumpling soup, liver, potatoes, sausages and all the usual smorrebrod and fixings as well as lots of beer and some holiday glogg which is like a hot mulled wine made with red wine, brandy, spices, raison and almonds. We ate and drank like kings. When it was all over we packed up for our flight to Bombay.

Our flight to Bombay started out poorly. Again we could not fly from Aarhus to Copenhagen like we planned. We got stuck taking a ferry which made us miss our original flight time. No worries though as the whole plane load missed the departure. The plane waited for hours to allow everybody time to get to the airport in the foggy conditions. We finally departed about eight hours later than we planned. We were tired out from the hassles of getting to and on this flight and so was everybody else including all the other passengers and the crew. It turns out that the crew had planned on doing a round trip from Bombay to Copenhagen without changing crews or resting between the two flights. We paid dearly for that overtired overworked crew. The service sucked. They didn't have enough food for us all and they were grumpy serving what they did have. We were in the air for hours before the shit finally hit the fan. The crew decided to just up and quit working entirely.

The pilot tried to get them to go back to work but they just refused. He begged them over the intercom to come back to work otherwise by international laws, he would have to land the plane and it would be an even longer time before the crew got back home. The crew did not go for it. The pilot decided to land the plane. The nearest airport was in Kuwait so he corrected his flight plan and radioed the airport that we were coming in for an unexpected emergency landing. They responded by saying that if the plane even entered their airspace we would be shot down. The pilot put on the loudspeakers so that the entire plane could hear his discussions with the tower. Jet fighters appeared at either wingtip, above us, below us and behind us. They were practically touching our wings with theirs and the pilots of the fighters were glaring at us. The pilot explained that under international rules the airport had to allow us to land safely. They insisted that we would be shot down because we were unclean. The pilot told us he had no choice and had to go in for the landing. He sent out mayday signals and turned the plane to land at their airport despite the tower telling us we would be shot down. Since I am writing this, we clearly were not shot down that day. However when we landed we were immediately surrounded by military vehicles with large caliber machine guns mounted on them and ordered not to open the doors or we would be fired on.

So we sat on the runway in blistering heat and the pilot negotiated with them. We needed some fuel and they agreed to sell us some after much debate. Only one little problem, they did not take Shell Oil credit cards which is all the pilot had with him to pay for fuel. The pilot's solution to this was to come out and ask each passenger for some cash and then he wrote an IOU for whatever amount you gave him that would be refunded in Bombay. I threw in twenty bucks and eventually we had enough money to buy fuel so that we could take off again but only if the crew agreed to go back to work. They decided that it was better to go back to work than to die of heat exhaustion from sitting on a blistering hot runway for hours in a closed plane with no air conditioning going. We were all sweating like pigs and it would not be long before the weaker ones would start passing out and dying. They fueled us up and escorted us with their gunships and we took off again about five hours after we had landed in this inhospitable country. The flight the rest of the way was uneventful. The crew was extremely nice and almost apologetic for the delay. We were all very tired by now and just wanted to get to Bombay and get some sleep.