Arriving At Flock To Fedora 2023 - Part II

When we deboarded from the Vistara flight after reaching the Indira Gandhi International Airport (DEL) at around 11:00 pm Indian Standard Time on 31st July 2023, we headed to the domestic-to-international transfers to get our passports stamped. There were designated queues for passengers who were travelling on their first flight outside of the country and for those who were getting connected to a consecutive flight outside of the country. Sumantro and I joined the queue for transit immigration but only I was able to make it through while Sumantro and a bunch of other passengers who also landed here from the same Vistara UK708 flight we were on had to head back to the normal immigration queue.

While it was not something to worry about as we had the time to spare, it was inconvenient for Sumantro and the other passengers as they now had to trace their way back to the entrance of the airport, go through the security checks and then, join the more-crowdier normal immigration queue. We proceeded towards the expected gate for the connecting flight British Airways BA142 separately and I waited for some time before Sumantro got to the gate as well. This is when we got an email from British Airways with them stating that they regretted the delayed departure of the connecting flight and offering a dinner meal from a Delhi Capitals-themed restaurant in the airport to compensate for it.

As we did have some food on the Vistara UK708 flight sometime before, we decided to go ahead and limit ourselves to some lightweight snacks. Sumantro and I knew that the delayed connecting flight from Delhi, India (DEL) to London, England (LHR) would lead us to miss our consecutive connecting flight from London, England (LHR) to Cork, Ireland (ORK) but as that was a situation that was not under our control, we decided to not worry much about it and instead chat about the state of affairs around our lives as well as in the communities that we were parts of during our mealtime. Once we were done with our meals, we began heading back to gate number 7 where our flight would depart from.

Luckily, the time of departure got preponed a little bit to 04:30 am Indian Standard Time on 01st August 2023 from the previous time of 05:00 am Indian Standard Time. It was not as good as it would have been if the flight would have departed at its original time of 01:30 am Indian Standard Time on 01st August 2023 but it was a bit too late in the day for us to complain about anything. Once we got ourselves through the final security checks, we had to communicate to the British Airways staff that we were transiting from a Vistara UK flight and get our checked-in items of luggage manually moved over to the consecutive flights. Then we moved into our designated seats when we boarded our flight.

Before I forgot to do so, I quickly got myself an international roaming recharge for the mobile data plans before the flight took off. As it was pretty late in the day and we could use some respite, we decided to skip the first meal provided by the flight. We were also pretty full from the meals that we had on the Vistara UK708 flight as well as from the Delhi Capitals-themed restaurant. As I was seated on the aisle seat and Sumantro was on the window seat, I requested the passenger in the middle seat for a seat swap - something that he kindly agreed to do. I still had some energy left so I decided to finish off the remaining part of the Puss In Boots movie, before finally catching some shut-eye.

This article would be followed by the "Arriving At Flock To Fedora 2023 - Part III" article.