It’s better!

Sure, Iron Man has his suit. Bat Man has his utility belt. Heck, even Wonder Woman has her lasso and her push-up bra. But I had my own secret travel weapon. I was… Super-Cane Granny.

As my fellow passengers stumbled off our ten-hour flight to Mumbai, a very nice young man in an electric cart saw my cane and insisted I hop aboard. He whisked me through passport control and over to baggage claim.

From there, I got to realize a lifetime ambition when a tall, handsome man in a uniform held up a sign with my name on it, there to sweep me and my luggage off to the decadent luxury that is the JW Marriott Mumbai Sahar Hotel. I’m going to skip over the fabulous beds and even the jetted tub because along with their incredible palace-sized buffet serving roughly 99% of the breakfast foods on the planet, the JW Marriott Mumbai Sahar Hotel has DROIDS! I couldn’t make this up. R2D2’s cousin was bussing the tables.

Sadly, late checkout time arrived all too soon, and another uniformed staff member drove me back to the airport. Because KLM had randomly changed my itinerary to force me to reach Mumbai two nights before the rest of my group were scheduled to meet up, I’d been planning to spend the rest of the time inside the airport waiting for my friend Janine to arrive. Only… in India, you have to have an active boarding pass to even enter the airport.

The security guard at the door peered at the digital ticket on my phone. “Madam, this is for tomorrow,” he said, clearly pitying me. “You have to come back two hours before your flight.”  I was in the middle of explaining about KLM and the days I’d spent trying to get them to see reason, but his eyes glazed over. “I’ll get someone to help.” He waved over a customer agent from IndiGo, the domestic airline we would be flying when everyone arrived. The agent was reluctant, but did I mention that airport guards in India carry HONKING huge guns? They are very persuasive.

Agent IndiGo looked at my boarding pass (okay, technically it was for the next day, but REALLY early) and shook his head. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”  A glance at the gun-toting guard and he forced himself to add, “Sorry Madam.” We all looked down at my pile of luggage and my cane. After a conference involving several more people from the airline, the guards, and random passersby including an interested dog, most agreed that I should get another hotel room. (The dog kept his opinions to himself.)

Unfortunately, the droid-serviced luxury of the Marriott was fully booked. The other option, it turned out, was the airport hotel located directly below the actual airport. As in fully underground, a hotel for vampires instead of robots. Still, as a resting place for me and any random Children of the Night, the hotel was better than a coffin. I crossed the airport to the parking garage, went down in the elevator, and walked what felt like blocks to the hotel entrance. I checked in, set my alarm for the middle of the night, and crashed.

Stumbling to check out at 0:dark-thirty, I asked the best way to the airport. They pointed to their elevator that went directly inside the airport, bypassing armoured guards and unhelpful airline agents. All righty then. I hobbled off the elevator at Departures, and Super-Cane Granny was immediately flooded with offers of assistance, wheelchairs, and pleas to be allowed to escort me to the front of the check-in line, as well as security, and passport control.

I’d met up with my friend Janine’s flight arriving from the USA, and we were waiting at the gate of our connecting flight to Vadodara. In my secret identity of Super-Cane Granny, we were waved through to the first seats on the bus, and up to our airplane seats. Although it was less than an hour flight, I’m pretty sure I saw halos on the sprinting flight attendants as they brought breakfast and coffee.

We arrived to find Jaya and her husband waiting to whisk us off for chai. Horns blared as the day heated up, we were caffeinated, and ready for this year’s India adventures. Right? Well, no actually. Turns out Jaya had arranged for us to give some talks about our travels and books. She pictured us dropping by these appointments, chatting, and moving on to the next ones. I pictured myself up on a stage, which is usually something I imagine as my punishment if I took up torturing kittens. Janine didn’t picture anything because she was busy taking actual pictures.

I showed Janine and Jaya my mess of notes, and they both looked concerned. “Maybe we could say we all have Covid?”

“Homework,” I told them. “All you have to do is go through the approximately ten thousand photos of the past decade of travel, and choose no more than six for each year’s trip.” (Let’s just draw a curtain over the next few days of tears, pleading, and extremely unladylike sotto voce comments directed my way.)

 

But the best part was when the talks were over, and Super-Cane Granny could get back to eating her way across the states of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.