My first air travel!

So my first air travel was totally an out of the blue experience. Vacation at the beach gone wrong!

t was back in 2017, we were in Puri on a family vacation and we had driven there all the way from Kolkata. (My father loves LONG drives and we have been going to Puri by car from since I can remember atleast once and at most three times a year so the car ride is not extreme for us!)

On the day after we reached, we were supposed to go to the beach early in the morning and then visit the temple afterwards. My elder sister woke up with extreme pain starting from her lower back and upwards. I don’t remember exactly which side but the pain was so extreme that she couldn’t move and also couldn’t eat anything and vomited it all out. My father immediately set out in search of a doctor and since the hotel had one on call and he was brought to the hospital immediately. He checked everything and said it was due to kidney stones or stones in the gall bladder. He gave medicines to help ease the pain and suggested we take a flight back to Kolkata or drive to Bhubaneshwar and conduct a few tests.

Puri doesn’t have it’s own airport and the nearest one is in Bhubaneshwar. So we had to get there fast. We had our personal car so it took like half and hour to pack and leave the hotel. On the way, the pain had subsided a little and my sister said she probably go could hold it all the way home. But my parents were worried. So it was decided that my mother would take both of my sisters and me back home by flight from Bhubaneshwar and my father would drive back home. My sister pleaded a lot worried that my father would have to drive for eight hours all alone worrying about her all that time, but there was no other option. (As much as she pleaded, it was pretty clear she would not be able to hold on for 8 hours sittinh straight in a car.)

So my father waited till we had our tickets arranged and dropped us at the airport and started his journey back home. My mother arranged for a wheel chair for my sister and off we went to board the flight about to depart in a few minutes. Since everything was last minute, the seats were scattered here and there. But the airport staff managed to get two pairs of seats side by side. Two in the front, one for my sister since she was sick and my mother sat beside her. Another pair at the middle of the plane allocated for my younger sister and me. (I have an elder sister and a younger sister. I am the MIDDLE CHILD. )

My younger sister was about eleven years old and scared as hell. I was around 16 and as much as I was excited, I was scared too. I was in charge of my sister for the whole flight. There was a very helpful air hostess too who frequently came and asked us if we were comfortable and if there was something we needed or if we wanted to convey something to our mother. She was super nice.

When the plane was ready to take off, my sister clutched my hands as tight as she could and I tried to console her as much as I could. She was sitting there with a pretty scared face and just to cheer her up I wrote on a note pad “How are you feeling?”

“Mummy ke lagbe” she wrote back. (Translation: I need mummy.)

(I still have that note pad somewhere but couldn’t find it. I will add a picture when I do find it.)

Everyone indeed needs their mum whenever they are scared! It was a pretty scary experience overall but the silver lining was we got on our first flight ever! The feeling of flying above the clouds was pretty cool and my sister soon forgot about the fear and stared through the window at the clouds. We were scared about our sister, about our father returning home alone, about how to open the seat belts but everything worked out at the end. It was thirty something minute flight If I remember correctly so we reached Kolkata pretty soon and had it all figured out.