Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Bad Travel

RHYS BOWEN: Today, as you read this blog, I’m on a plane, somewhere over the North Atlantic, heading for England. I’m visiting Europe for the first time in three years. That’s a big chunk of my life without seeing friends and family and I’m so looking forward to it. But I’m really out of the habit of traveling. Airports, security lines, airplanes, taxis are all scary things at the moment. I wear my mask and hope for the best.

And I remind myself that travel is always an adventure. When it goes smoothly and the hotel is lovely and the sights are spectacular and the food is great the memory passes into a pleasant haze. The trips we remember are those when everything did not go well.

So this is a post about my worst travel experiences: at number one on the list has to be our journey to Ladakh. This was back in the seventies. Ladakh had just opened to foreigners and we thought we’d like to be the first tourists to see what was essentially a forbidden country. So we arranged for a Ladakhi driver to take us in a jeep. He arrived at five a.m. speaking no known language. We communicated by gestures and set off.


                At first the trip went up into the Himalayas through pleasant alpine meadows. Then the climb began in earnest up the Zoji La pass (15,000 feet). Road unpaved with occasional water coursing across it. Occasional groups of nomads with their goats to be negotiated AND a sheer drop on one side.  We made it to the top and entered the Dras valley—coldest and highest inhabited valley in the world. In an open jeep we wrapped in blankets. On the other side of the valley we encountered a bleak area of high desert mountains, and then suddenly, a police road block.


We stopped. An Indian army person approached, sporting a turban and magnificent mustaches. We would have to go back. (he waved his hands at us) There had been a landslide and 25 km of road had washed away. For one crazy moment we considered carrying our luggage across 25 km of landslide in the hope that we'd find transportation on the other side. Then sanity prevailed. We had no alternative but to turn around and go back. Of course the driver had known this but conveniently failed to mention it. His inscrutable Tibetan face betrayed nothing as we got back in the jeep. We hadn’t eaten since 9. It was now 4:30. We were cold and hungry and had almost twelve hours of travel ahead of us.

                That was when we found the driver’s idea of saving gasoline was to turn off the engine when going downhill. Seriously downhill, like a 15,000 foot pass with a sheer drop on one side (and streams rushing across it. And goats.) I was sitting beside him and my job was to slap his hand every time it went to the key.  We finally got back to Kashmir at midnight. We did not tip him.

And the kicker to this, the insult to injury.... we had a lovely houseboat on the lake in Kashmir and both got dysentery so badly that the doctor had to be rowed across to us in the middle of the night. So our relaxing week in Kashmir was spent staring at the carved ceiling in between staggering to the bathroom.

So that was the worst. The others are mild in comparison: the time we went to the station in Lourdes to catch at train to Toulouse, 3 hours away, only to find the trains on strike. We were due to fly out of Toulouse that afternoon and out of London next day. We ended up taking a taxi (300 Euros), quite illegally, as taxis were on strike too.  And we had a similar strike experience when French rail was on strike as we left Florence, Italy so we had to make sure we took an Italian train into Nice. 

We’ve had bad hotels, dodgy plumbing, Dehli belly etc but on the whole it’s been all good. Amazing, actually. I feel so blessed to have experienced India, Bali, Mayasia, Thailand, almost all of Europe, Australia, NZ etc etc. as well as Egypt, Morocco.  These days I find myself opting for more comforting, familiar destinations.

                I’ll let you know how this one measures up.

AND who has a travel horror story to share?

49 comments:

  1. Oh, my goodness . . . no travel catastrophe story could top your Ladakh trip, Rhys . . . .

    We’ve been quite fortunate . . . our travel mishaps have been minimal. I believe the worst we’ve ever experienced was getting to the airport only to learn that our flight had been canceled because of bad weather. [But the airline booked us on a flight for the following day, upgrading us to first class. So we spent another day with my sister and her family and had a lovely flight home just a bit later than expected] . . . .

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  2. Oh my goodness, Rhys! I was reminded of a scene from your novel ROYAL BLOOD when Lady Georgie was trying to travel from the train station to the castle.

    Trying to recall any horrible travel stories. I can only recall the airlines losing our luggage?

    Travelling to England is something that I wish I was doing. I would so much love to go back to Britain and Europe. I can imagine the mood in Britain with the new Prime Minister.

    I am about to go on my first trip since the pandemic. I am flying out this weekend for a relative's family event. There will be 100 people and most of the people will not be wearing masks! I will definitely keep my mask on. Probably will not stay long, though. 100 people and only one bathroom. Unbelievable!

    Bringing good books to read in case my flight is delayed.

    Diana

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    1. p.s. regardless of the current politics, I would love to see England and Scotland again, especially because I love the gardens there.

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    2. Diana, 100 people and only one bathroom sounds like it COULD turn into a travel horror story! If I were going, I would avoid eating and drinking anything all day...

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    3. Stay safe, Diana! Rhys

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    4. Laughing so hard here. Thanks, everyone!

      Diana

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  3. RHYS: Yikes, that was a bad trip. These days it's hard to plan around abrupt rail/taxi strikes and delayed & canceled flights.

    One of my early solo trips to England in the 1980salmost ended badly. I had to get to Gatwick but had no money for the Gatwick Express train so I took the bus. THE G7 were meeting and the police set up multiple roadblocks for the motorcade. So I arrived to check in 45 minutes before my flight to Toronto and I was denied boarding. Broke, no credit card or phone, I went to travelers aid for help. I made a collect call to my parents to NOT cone pick me up at Pearson Airport. I must have looked pathetically distraught. The kind lady there (Shirley English) took me to her home for dinner, next day breakfast and brought me back to Gatwick to catch my flight.

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    1. Ah, Grace--isn't it comforting to know there are people like Shirley in this world?

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    2. FLORA: Very true. And I learned a key lesson and have never arrived late for a flight since then!

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  4. Edith, you're speaking in words quite unintelligible to me. Although I used to travel frequently (so much so that my first class trip to China in 2001 was paid for with frequent flyer miles), my knees stopped functioning a dozen years ago, and (especially since the pandemic), as I age, I am more and more reluctant to leave the comforts of home.

    Worst travel exerience? Anytime I've wound up sleeping on the bathroom floor due to a combination of allergies and travellers diarrhea, which has happened too often, and especially if it's in a country where I can't speak the language. Otherwise, it's just part of the adventure, but THOSE nights....

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  5. Speaking of "the adventure," the pensione in Rome gave away our reservation and my friend Shula (who had come from Israel) and I (who had come from Florence) wanted to be in the same hotel as her parents (who had come in from Boston). Her parents had their room, but the only way they could accommodate us was with two cots lined up in their narrow linen closet and access to the staff bathroom/cleaning closet. I have a photo of us in Pompeii looking very tired after a night of crawling over each other and having piles of sheets and towels cascading onto us. (Yes, this is the same Shula from my story of the wedding that took place after the hurricane came through Marblehead 50 years ago this past weekend).

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  6. Rhys, nothing I've encountered tops your story.

    I have a horror of snakes and this happened: I wandered out of the crocodile mummy museum on the Nile in Egypt and encountered a gate keeper who thrust a snake in my face. "You like snake, lady? Nice snake, no teeth."

    It was a spitting cobra. I shrieked and raced for the boat at top speed.

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    1. Oh my God, Margaret! I would have run all the way to the airport!

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    2. That was worse, Margaret! Rhys

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  7. Rhys, what a horrible experience!

    My "bad experiences" all ended well, where they could have gone very badly. I remember 4 of us (college students) arriving at Gare du Nord in Paris around 6 pm. We were planning to stay at a youth hostel, although we didn't have reservations and didn't know where it was. We then figured out that it was actually well outside the city and closed at 8 pm. We were sitting on the floor trying to figure out what to do. A couple of African students came up and were glad to practice English with us. They said they knew of a cheap hotel and would walk us over there. It was pretty much a flea bag hotel (the room was shaking from the noise of the couple making love next door), but we had a safe place to stay. One of the students came and joined us for breakfast the next day. We were so grateful! We also had a bad experience hitchhiking, also in France, and had to ask to get out of the creepy van. Then we got a good ride. I also "took a walk" with a shepherd guy I met at a commune called Lothlorien in Scotland. Naive Gillian thought a walk was a walk. I had to push him away and run back down the hill. So few bad experiences and so many amazingly good experiences are stored in my brain.

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    1. Gillian, I had a few wrestling matches back when I was traveling alone in my very early 20s. There was a Dubliner I met while in Heidelberg who kindly walked me home to my inn, and assumed that meant an invitation into my room. I literally had to shove the door shut to be rid of him. Of course, we were both pretty drunk, and laughing the whole time, and it still makes me smile as a memory, though when I told my daughters about it they were utterly horrified.

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    2. I imagine they were! I don't think I'll tell my son about the smelly shepherd :)

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  8. Bon voyage, Rhys and John! I know there will be joyful reunions at both ends of your long journey.

    Twice, my flight home from Europe was canceled because of strikes, one in the States, and the other in Paris--both Delta pilots. Delays, scary long on-hold phone calls from Europe, and a lot of anxiety, but nothing too exciting.

    I got traveler's tummy on a trip in South America, and on my first trip to Africa. Both times I missed a day of the itinerary. Could have been worse, I guess. Our flight home from Kenya last July was a nightmare, though. A packed full plane, with a screaming baby four rows behind us. She screamed for nine solid hours, and no one, especially her poor, beleagured parents, got any sleep.

    We are going to Africa one last time over Christmas. Keeping my fingers crossed for smooth travel then!

    And if you were following my daughters' adventures on Facebook, they summited Mt. Kilimanjaro two days ago, and are already on the way back to Nairobi. It took five days to get to the top (19,341 feet), and a day and a half to get down. Holly said they put in 12 miles the last day. We don't know much detail yet; they had limited Internet, of course. But they both looked healthy and so happy to have made it in the pictures they sent late yesterday. A bottle of Kilimanjaro beer may or may not have been depicted, too.

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    1. Intrepid travelers! You must be so proud! The photos on Facebook are great.

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  9. Cheers to Holly! A bottle of beer well deserved!

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  10. Have a great trip, Rhys! My travels have been easy, compared to your experiences. The worst I've experienced was in my early field days--crummy motels (sleeping with your clothes on because you didn't want any part of yourself actually touching the bed), no port-a-pots on site (climbing a rain-slicked hillside above a rockshelter, trying to find a convenient brush pile tall enough to keep you out of the line of sight of dozer operators and praying no copperheads or timber rattlers were around when you dropped your britches), etc. Because I cared about more than my own comfort, I managed to drag management into the 20th century and upgrade mine and the crew's accommodations and field amenities.

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    1. Yes, Flora, finding the right bush and not disturbing the wildlife. Yeah, you can laugh now!!

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  11. OMG, Rhys. I do not want to compete with your horror story. Any time there is a bad stomach problem involved, it is a horror story on its own!

    I do remember waiting for a flight out of Athens for 12 hours, but my step mother was in charge so I don't really remember the reason for the delay. It was hot. Very hot.

    I've had canceled flights, flight delays, a white knuckled flight in a small regional airplane in a storm (ack), a cruise through a hurricane on a smallish ship (350 passengers), traffic nightmares on drives, but everything pales compared to your Himalayan adventure!! God bless. Have a wonderful trip!!

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  12. Grace, you mentioned, "the kind lady there (Shirley English) took me to her home for dinner, next day breakfast and brought me back to Gatwick to catch my flight." That reminds me of all our many trips to England. The people are the best part of England!

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  13. Rhys, have a lovely time. I'm sure it'll be wonderful.

    I have nothing to top that. Worst is when I was working in The USVI and I flew home for Christmas (a government-booked flight). I arrived in San Juan and was told my flight from SJ to Atlanta had been canceled - not the whole flight, just my ticket. I told the woman the US government had arranged the trip and that was impossible. They were able to get me to Atlanta and I spent the five-hour flight from Atlanta to Buffalo sitting in the middle seat of a five-seat row and a small boy kicked the armrest the whole way.

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    1. Liz, so sorry that you went through these experiences. At least you made it home, right?

      Diana

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    2. I did! At that point, if I had to hitchhike from PR to Buffalo, I was going home for the holidays!

      Actually, hitchhiking from PR to the continental US would've been an interesting experience.

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  14. Grace, your story about Shirley English reminded me of when I was in London. I was at Oxford that summer. I decided to see the Royal Ballet in London. I took the train and was planning to take the train back home to Oxford from London. I was sitting in the balcony when I met a family. Their son was a ballet dancer in the show. They insisted on driving me all the way back to Oxford from London even if it took them out of the way (they lived in Aylesbury ?)

    Diana

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    1. DIANA: Nice family. I agree with you that I met plenty of kind locals during my travels in England, Wales and Scotland.

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  15. I think we were told there were rest houses along the way. There was one. At .9 am!

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  16. My grandmother died while I was in Mexico and my father had arranged for her memorial service to occur before I was supposed to arrive at home. I was lucky to be traveling with a group and the travel coordinator was with us, so I made it home about 12 hours before the service. If there was an upside of leaving the tour early, it was that a special dinner had been arranged and almost everyone got sick.

    Great travels to you all.

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  17. Rhys, YOU WIN! Hands down. My travel misadventure: we were heading to Cuttyhunk, an island in the Long Island Sound - you get there by ferry, no cars, no stores on the island. With us were 6-month-old Naomi and 4-year-old Molly. We got there and realized that, while we had boxes of pampers and and food, we'd forgotten our suitcase. This was particularly mortifying for Molly who had to swim in the ocean in her underwear. For us we were borrowing a friend's house so we managed to wash and line dry our underwear and between times went around with sheets wrapped around like togas. There was a store where we could get toothbrushes. Really it (and diapers) turned out to be the only things we couldn't live wihtout.

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    1. Hallie, Jane and I drove to Clare in Arizona when the girls were 2 and infant. And Jane forgot their suitcase. One trip to Savers thrift shop and we were okay! Rhys

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    2. I love the toga solution, perfect for a vacation!

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  18. Rhys, you are such a trouper! And it all makes wonderful stories...Safe travels!

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  19. Rhys, you are a force! Truly, I'm in awe. I'm not nearly so adventurous. Give me an ocean view and room service and I'm good. LOL! No terrible experiences so far and I plan to keep it that way!

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    1. Jenn, that reminds me. A friend was spending her junior year abroad in Spain. She and her friends decided to visit Morrocco. She wanted to take a photo of a man on a camel. He said that my friend had to pay him $$$$ before he would let them take a photo of him on a camel.

      Diana

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  20. I'm embarrassed to say I've never heard of Ladakh. As to strikes in Italy affecting travel, my husband and I joke that the three favorite words in Italy are "Chiuso per Sciopero" - Closed for Strike. Interesting how the strikes always happen on a Monday or Friday! (My mom is Italian and I'm first gen on her side.)

    And wow! Rhys, you are a way braver and more adventurous soul than I am.

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    1. Ellen, when our tour bus crossed the Italian Border, we got caught in traffic. We arrived in Italy during rush hour. There were several men who got out of their cars and went to the grass by the road to pee! LOL. I am laughing because some of the people in our tour went over to the windows to look. I could see it from my seat and I did not want to look.

      Diana

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  21. Rhys, I certainly don't have a horror story to match yours. There are few things I can imagine to be more terrifying than the drive up and down the mountain you had. The sheer drop is the stuff of my nightmares. But, I do envy you all your travels and your current trip to England. I hope you and John have a lovely trip to see family and friends across the pond.

    My travel horror story pales in comparison to yours, Rhys, but it seemed pretty awful at the time. It involves getting stuck in the Atlanta airport for 18 hours. There were two flights, our gates right across from each other who were stuck because of heavy storms causing delays earlier in the day/evening. It wasn't so bad when the stores and restaurants were open, but after they closed, it felt like each hour was a day long. The passengers waiting at the opposite gate got Chick-Fil-A sandwiches delivered around midnight. Our side was set up with sodas and water and airplane snacks. To add insult to injury, our meager provisions were set up on a table in front of our gate. Passengers from an off-loading flight walked by and starting helping themselves to OUR stuff. I'd had enough and started telling people that they were for our group who had been stuck at the airport all day. When someone dared to cross over from the other gate to pick out something from our supplies, I wasn't nice about telling him where to get off with his hot sandwich he'd already enjoyed. Finally at 2:00 a.m., a flight took us out of there, and I was so grateful that our small regional airport stayed open to accommodate those of us coming in to it. Did I mention that my flight started in Hawaii? I was so tired and so glad to sleep in my bed when I got home.

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    1. The above comments are from me, Kathy Boone Reel.

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    2. Intrepid doesn't even begin to describe you, Rhys! Wow! I don't have any travel horror stories (unless you count driving while my husband attempts to give me directions - we argue every time :-/), but I do have a lovely story about a flight from Minnesota to San Francisco in 2006. We'd been visiting my nephew and his family that August and decided to take their two kids home with us for a month so they could see their grandmother, aunts, uncle and cousins. Since it was so last-minute, the only seats available were in first class. (That's the only way I fly now, but that trip we were in what I refer to as steerage.) When we boarded I explained to the flight attendants that the kids were with us, but our seating was separate. One of them promised to watch over them. We had a plane change in Dallas, and when we landed I got to the front as soon as I could, but the kids were nowhere in sight. Absolute panic set in, especially since these were young children who'd never even been *to* an airport, let alone on a plane. After what seemed like years, a flight attendant showed me to the cockpit, where the kids were sitting on the laps of our pilot and co-pilot, wearing their caps, playing with toy planes they'd been given. I can still feel that rush of relief today, along with absolute amazement that they'd been allowed into the cockpit in that newly post-9/11 world! The attendant told me they were among the best behaved kids they'd ever had on board, so polite and cooperative. We had the exact same crew for the next leg of the trip, and they again took excellent care of the kids. Hooray for kind, thoughtful professionals.

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  22. OMG, Rhys! That is horrifying. I bet you are a fast hand slapper!

    I've been so fortunate, no bad travel stories. Some interesting ones that are funny in retrospect, some have ended up in short stories, but none really bad.

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  23. Thank you for putting everything into perspective! My stories are mere inconveniences in comparison. Arriving in Falkirk Scotland for a narrowboat trip, going to our hotel for the night before and they had no record of a reservation. “No worries, I’ll just find the email confirmation!” Nothing, even though I had complete certainty that I had made a reservation (things like this make me believe in alternate timelines). It was the weekend of the local fair, so everything was booked, but the lovely staff found us a hotel not too far away.
    The other occasion was a small plane flight in the Cook Islands from Aitutaki to Rarotonga. The turbulence was so bad I just went catatonic.

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  24. Just remembered a ironic travel story. Not sure if this qualifies as a bad travel story exactly. I was in Europe for a history conference. I was in Amsterdam when I ran into a history graduate student. Note: We both are Deaf and communicated in Sign Language. This happened another lifetime ago BEFORE I got Cochlear Implants. We decided to take a canal tour of Amsterdam. We asked the tour guide on the boat if there was a script. The lady INSISTED that she speaks English. It was an hour tour. Guess what? We were looking at the sights and talking in Sign Language. it FINALLY dawned on the lady that we could NOT HEAR her ! She ran to our seats and apologized. She gave us a copy of the script HALF AN HOUR into the tour! We scurried to catch up and tried to remember what we just saw!

    This is a peek into what it is like to be Deaf and communicating in Sign Language. Before I travel, I always read the travel books about the places that I plan to visit. It also helped that I read History at Uni. Europe is full of history!

    Diana

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