It has been a while since I attacked the keyboard, but now that we are more or less well-settled in our “home away from home” in Durban, South Africa, I thought I will let it rip, for there is plenty I would like to share with you.
In a nutshell, it has been an amazing experience thus far and I have a strong feeling that this trip could well turn out to be one of my most memorable outings.
To start at the very beginning, the Chennai-Dubai journey was a four-hour flight and I settledown with in-flight entertainment and bit of chatter with the players.
It was a smooth and uneventful flight until one player came up with the problem you don’t want to have travelling abroad - a missing passport! Fortunately, it was a two-hour halt in Dubai and we had enough time to retrieve the passport with the help of a very co-operative airline staff.
The boys peeked through the Duty Free shops and I was particularly pleased with myself for not yielding to the temptations, but settled to watch George Bailey admire his new acquisition - a wrist watch. He proudly wore it on his right hand and viewed it from different angles in the mirror (still wondering why he did that!).
His team-mates surrounded him with teasing laughter at this amusing act. It came up at breakfast table as well.
So, on to our next leg of the journey, Dubai to Johannesburg, a 7-1/2 hour flight that seemed to go on and on. I went through three movies and an unfinished one from the earlier flight, The Curious case of Benjamin Button.
Button, if you haven’t seen the movie, was 80 years old at birth and grows younger with passage of time. It left me wishing I could do that just to have a knock with the new 20-20 concept!
Meanwhile, Suresh Raina was busy snapping pictures with the flash going off on sleeping team mates. Kasi (Viswanathan, the cricket manager), so used to having the cell phone glued to his ears, continued to hold his hand on the ear while talking between his naps.
In Johannesburg, we went through the immigration formalities in a jiffy but the ride to our hotel for the overnight stay was a long one. There was not much to see as we landed after sun down.
So my first impressions of South Africa was limited to the courteous folks we met at the airport. We checked into the hotel and were off to bed straightaway as we had a morning flight to Durban where we were to be based for the time being.
The flight to Durban was just one hour and went off smoothly. I enjoyed the landscape which looked so different to any other that I had a chance to see from the “heavens”.
The coastline though reminded me of Chennai with its long, winding beaches, busy ports and large vessels anchored at sea.
On arrival in Durban, Mahalingam, a former SBI player who runs a southie restaurant in Durban and calls himself Mali, met us at the airport. He is our local assistance and so idlies and sambar should be in plentiful supply during our week’s stay in Durban!
I am sure, we will enjoy our sojourn in Durban…but for the moment, let me sign off, and more will follow later..
