Delhi

We've made it to Delhi, but it wasn't necessarily smooth or easy.

Getting to Seatac on Monday morning was simple enough (gotta love that new Tacoma Narrows bridge). However, a storm system on the East Coast - specifically New York City and Newark, N.J., caused first a 30-minute delay, then another 30-minute wait. The big problem was that we originally had only about 1.5 hours in Newark between flights - which is plenty if you don't have two delays.

And unfortunately, the gate we were arriving at was on the opposite side of the airport from where we were departing. Fortunately, the good folks at Continental Airlines arranged to have one of those electric carts waiting for us and another half-dozen people who ended up with less than 15 minutes by the time we got into Newark.

This had our hearts racing because we certainly did not want a 24-hour delay in Newark when there was no guarantee we'd even have a seat on the next flight. As my brother, Joe, might no-so-fondly recall, this was not unlike the dozens of times our mother had to tear through Bremerton to catch a ferry to Seattle. (And this gave me flashbacks of the last big trip my mom and I took together: In 1982, we were headed to the Middle East for the summer. Because of a high volume of air traffic in JFK, our flight was delayed 2.5 hours, giving us 10 minutes to get from the domestic to the international terminals. We had only carry-ons, so we ran through the airport and made it to the gate on time, only to learn they'd given our seats away to standby. My mom broke out the tears and got us onto our flight to Cairo.)

Yesterday was another thrill ride with a few unhappy moments but one giant relief once we were on the plane. Melissa was prepared to play the "adoption card" to get on that plane, but it fortunately never came to that.

The Newark-to-Delhi flight (which I jokingly said was from one third-world country to another) was 12.5 hours. It felt that long, maybe longer. Business class made it more tolerable, however. It was fun to see how the other 1/10th of 1 percent lives.

Once we landed in Delhi, getting through customs and baggage claim was quite smooth. We were met by Rakesh, the same driver Mom has used in her three prior visits to India. He is very kind, charming and funny. He gave us updates on his family and tried to point out a few of Delhi's highlights (not easy to do with the traffic and darkness).

Delhi drivers are insane. I've driven in Rome and Israel. I would never, ever drive in Delhi. It could not even be described as controlled chaos. The traffic lanes are merely "guidelines," as everyone just goes where they want, merrily honking their horns along the way. Only Cairo approaches what we experienced on the drive from the airport to the hotel.

Once we sort of got over the fact that we could crash and die every 12 seconds, we began to pick up a sort of rhythm to the driving. Rakesh happily chatted away with Mom as he negotiated the road with a zillion other cars. He seriously pointed out that we were fortunate because traffic was "light" (no, not even by Seattle standards) and we were in India's third-largest city, with 12 million souls. I could not imagine what traffic could be like in Mumbai (the country's largest city) during heavy traffic.

We're staying at The Imperial Hotel, which is Mom's treat, as she wanted us to experience something grand that hearkens back to British colonial times. The hotel opened in the 1930s, and it has marble everywhere. It compares favorably with The Olympic Hotel in Seattle. It's the first place I've stayed where a man will turn on the water and depress the soap dispenser for you in the lobby's washroom.

It's about 7 a.m. local time. We get on a plane to Chennai in fewer than four hours. We go to the orphanage about 3 p.m. to meet Niranjana. As I told Melissa last night on the plane, I'll soon have three Perdue women running my life instead of two. For that, I am a willing and happy participant.