Pulling an all-nighter while travelling internationally is…

Not a good idea. Trust me, I know.

It seems to have become my specialty since I began to travel internationally. It requires spending your whole day up excited to go on the plane and then when you get on become unable to sleep for more than a couple hours, like on your first flight from Calgary to London. So you end up watching lots of Master Chef and hope you don’t have a long way to walk the rest of the day because you aren’t sure if your legs can hold you up. You have your two meals on the airplane and don’t have a clue what time it is. When that flight is done you quickly decide that trying to go somewhere in London is pointless because even though it feels like it is early in the morning it is actually 4 in the afternoon. So you take the easy option and go and watch TV in the hotel. Oh, and go and have a nice Indian dinner.

 Then you go and crash out on the couch turned into a bed and sleep-until 3am London time when you are wide awake for the next hour or so. Then you conk out again but wake up for the full English breakfast that you don’t have much of an appetite to eat because your stomach thinks it is the middle of the night. Then you scurry off to the airport and go through security, have a rather cross security guard who doesn’t seem to understand that talking in a rather loud voice and repeating things over and over again is actually NOT going to help us remember to take everything out of the bags that you need to…and then spend a few minutes waiting in the line to get your water bottle that you forgot to empty dumped out.

You make your way to the Heathrow Morton Camp Out spot away from the hustle and bustle. Some in your family take a nap; you on the other hand play peek-a-boo with an adorable little 2 year old a few rows of chairs down. When your gate opens you hurry down there and grab a few seats. You start seeing more Africans and you get more and more excited. You even hear some Luganda and you can’t wait. The plane begins boarding people…and then “Sorry folks; the engine is not working properly so we are going to be getting another aircraft brought in to fly to Entebbe, Uganda. As I find out more information, you will be the first to know.” Two hours and 5 pound vouchers to Starbucks later, we board the plane…only to find out that the 50 tons of fuel actually haven’t been put on the airplane yet…which will  be another half hour to one hour delay. So, instead of flying, you and your brother get to go inside the cockpit and talk to the pilots-very cool. Then you settle down for the wait in your seat.

 

 

After the plane is finally refueled the engines start… we are off….and….OH no wait…there is a tow that has broken down behind us, never mind, we will have to wait for that to move before we can back out of the space. Please hold on tight ladies and gentlemen. At this point, you laugh, because it is all you can do.

Five hours after your expected departure, you take off. Thankful to be gone but realizing that you are now going to get to Entebbe very early Saturday morning. The next eight hours are spent in the plane, trying to sleep very unsuccessfully and watching movies…this might be why you have eye fatigue.

When you land, it is 3am Saturday morning and you see all the people waiting to get on their plane to London and you feel bad for them, because it will probably be two more hours until they actually get to fly. In your sleepy state you go through the health check, which involves spraying some hand sanitizer on your hands, handing in your sheet that says you haven’t had any contact with an Ebola person, and getting your temperature taken. You then go and get stamps in your passports and then collect your fourteen pieces of baggage.

The man taking you to the guest house you are staying at shows up and we load all of our stuff on and make our way there. You hurriedly try to get to bed, and by the time your head hits the pillow it is 5:30, Saturday morning. You have to do it, but you know, three hours later you are up again. At 8:30 you wake up and eat breakfast and then hit the road back to Kasana, stopping for a few groceries along the way.

One final tip for you all, if you have to go shopping with my dad, make sure he has only had three hours of sleep, and then he doesn’t examine every price carefully, he just sticks things into the cart. We shopped in record time...it was awesome.

In three days, I got a grand total of fourteen hours of sleep and travelled to the opposite side of the world...not bad, but very tiring!