The Art of Non-Conformity: Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work, and Travel

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Sometimes it seems that wherever I go in the world, I’m always too early or too late to the party. One week ago today I was hanging out in Beirut, Lebanon, walking all over what I found to be a beautiful city, stopping for cappuccino along the waterfront and then having 40-cent falafel for lunch.

Today in the news, Beirut is under siege and the airport is closed. I’m usually disappointed when I find out I’ve missed a party somewhere, but this situation is serious enough that I’m glad to have missed it, and I’m concerned about the people I met there.

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Trip Update: I haven’t had a lot of time to post reports from my trip to South America and the Middle East, so while I’m hanging out in transit today, I thought I’d post this report instead of the usual Wednesday work essay. We’ll go back to regularly scheduled programming next week.

If you are a Twitter user, you can also follow my real-time updates here.

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Photo credit: Chris

Before the plane takes off for the 10 ½ hour flight to Santiago, the LAN Chile flight attendant wants to take my entire food and drink order while we’re still waiting to take off at JFK. I tell her I’ll have the pasta, but I can tell she’s waiting for something else.“Do you want bread with that?” she finally asks. Sure, OK. “Brown or white?”

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After I leave India and go to Tokyo, I pick up my OneWorld Round-the-World ticket at the American Airlines counter in Narita airport. This ticket has 20 flight segments, which is the maximum you’re allowed under OneWorld rules. Like most tickets these days, any Round-the-World ticket under 17 segments is issued as an e-ticket. When you use segments 17 through 20, however, the ticket has to be issued on paper stock.

I mention that because I am now in possession of the thickest plane ticket I have ever seen. I have 20 flight coupons, naturally, and all the required documentation, stapled together in a huge mass of paper. When I check in for my first flight, NRT-HKG, the Cathay Pacific agent is suitably impressed.

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Part I - Getting to India
Part II - India Travel Journal I

After traveling around by land during my first week in India, I arrive in Calcutta on a late-night Kingfisher Airlines flight from Hyderabad. The flight is great, and serves as a good model for what U.S. airlines could learn from if they were interested in learning anything. Everyone receives a full meal on the all-economy flight, we have Bollywood movies on our own individual screens, and the flight attendants are extremely gracious. It’s just like Jet Blue, except they actually deliver what they promise.

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I’m having an Indian coffee in the Churchgate section of Mumbai, roughly 15 hours after my arrival here. Since then, I’ve come in from the airport, crashed at a sad hotel, changed hotels, changed money, and tried to begin the process of acclimation to a culture that is new to me.

Mumbai is not a good place to show up without a room reservation. I knew this from reading the guides, but despite a few late night Skype calls and two email attempts, I have no reservation.

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