January 4th noon, and the journey home officially begins. We are taking a 2 o'clock afternoon flight from Khajuraho to Delhi, and then a 12:50AM flight on American Airlines from Delhi to Chicago non-stop. Well, that was plan at least. Turns out the local airport has issues this time of year, when the visibility ceiling gets below 1800 feet. Which it did the day we were suppose to fly home (and which it does several times a week during this time of year). So the flight was eventually canceled.
We are left with 3 options to get to Delhi:
1. Drive to Delhi
2. Drive to Jinasi and take an express train to Delhi
3. Try to fly to Delhi tomorrow on the same flight
The problem with option 1 is that it takes 12 hours on roads that make an Indiana chuckhole-filled road after the first spring thaw looks positively glacial. In case you don't believe me, the actual distance needed to travel is only 300 kilometers, which could easily be covered on a modern highway (albeit slightly speeding) in a quarter of the time - 2 hours, if you have the autobahn at your disposal.
Oh, and I almost forgot . . . the tour company did NOT recommend this option due to the fact that there are Maoist rebels between us and Delhi. Usually not safe in the daytime, really not safe at night. Add to the fact that you were asking a driver to drive essentially non-stop for 12 hours, we decided to pass on this option.
The problem with option 2 is that no one was willing to pay for it, not sure if we could actually get tickets, and the whole itinerary would get us into Delhi about 90 minutes before we needed to catch our plane - assuming, of course, that the train was on time, which with the fog this time of year was a long shot.
Option 3: Try to fly out of Khajuraho airport again tomorrow. Although the phrase, "First time shame on you, second time shame on me was going through my head". There really weren't any other options. It was the cheapest option, and the one still most likely to get us to Delhi the earliest and in one piece.
Besides, it's not like we had a flight out of Delhi anymore - but I'm getting ahead of myself.
