Welcome back – two weeks in India starts with a dumb, expensive mistake

“Is it Dan or Daniel?”

It is not a difficult question but my stomach twists a knot and I hear words come out of my mouth.

“Please don’t do that, please”

10 seconds into the conversation and I am begging, ignoring the adjacent shame and humiliation.

I am standing at the Virgin check-in desk in Heathrow. Our BA flight to India was cancelled an hour ago and after a long painful phone call to the BA telesales department (as there is not one BA person in Terminal 5 who deals with cancelled flights), we have been moved onto the Virgin flight leaving at 10:40am.

The time is 9:15. I thought we were going to get our of jail by hitching onto Virgin only half an hour later than our BA flight.

But the problem remains: am I Dan or Daniel?

And if I am one of these, why does the name on my ticket not match my passport?

“I am sorry Sir but we cannot let you on the flight. We are fined £4200 if the names are different. The only thing you can do is call BA and get them to change the name on your ticket – you’ve got 20 minutes then the flight closes.”

I want to argue but I know this is my fault. Who else to blame? I have taken many flights as Dan but none to India and apparently they have higher standards. Who knew?

I leave Luce and the girls to check-in and run to find BA.

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So welcome to the blog again. It is 5pm. Luce, Lola and Cesca are 3/4 of the way to Delhi and I have not moved for four hours. I have started and finished The Correspondent in one sitting – the sign of a superb book. I am in one of those pseudo-exec lounges which are now so popular they are just as crowded as the airside bars and restaurants.

This blog is haphazard, once every year or two we take a little adventurous trip – or adventurous to us – and document it here, aiming for a gentle mix of geography, travel and if we are lucky some politics, family arguments and a photo or three.

This time we are in Northern Indian, trekking in Ladakh. The whole trip is two weeks so maybe 5 or 6 posts here.

First I need to get to Delhi.

I could not change the name on my ticket as BA is one inflexible bureaucratic shitshow. It turns out the name ‘Dan’ was pulled through from the loyalty programme when I booked it, so it has been wrong for 15 years.

I said a rushed bye to the girls with one or two tears (not telling whose) as they were manhandled off to avoid missing the flight, leaving me standing like a mateless loser among all the DMOB-wired holidaymakers checking in under the purple (honestly) Virgin vibes lighting.

After two hours on the phone to BA I protected my return flight (which would have been invalid as I had not used the outbound flight). Then I bought a new one-way ticket on the only flight with space leaving London today: the 8pm Virgin flight to Delhi. It is more expensive that my BA return flight and so expensive I cannot publish the figure here.

I want to cry.

Feeling sorry for myself, I use about the only deal on my Barclays app and check-in to the Desperado Lounge.

1pm.

Only seven hours to kill.

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At this point Channer Tours is not looking very clever. It gets worse, trust me, in two days time. The next pain was trying to communicate with the Delhi pre-booked taxi by text while Luce was in passport control for hours. I won’t bore you anymore.

Fortunately I land in Delhi on time, muddle through the Indian love of paperwork (one visa, three other forms) and meet the family at 10:30 just as we had agreed.

And relax…..

(ps all typed on my phone so forgive mistakes)