Bon Voyage, Lalu!

Our little pup arrived last night in Sarasota, Florida, where he'll spend the best summer of his life - playing with Jeff's family's other two dogs, romping in their yard, going to the doggy beach and doggy park, basically heaven. Jeff's parents have very generously agreed to take care of him until we're settled in Boston at the end of the summer.

But to get there, he had to take the overnight train from Patna to Delhi, then a flight from Delhi to Newark, then a flight from Newark to Tampa.

Although my colleagues would never believe this, I think living and working here has made me more mellow. As evidence, I thought back on my experience getting him to Delhi and then getting him on the plane to Newark. Last July, I would  have described it as this epic nightmare, but it was actually just this silly and tiring adventure through Indian bureaucracy.

In Patna, we managed to squeeze me, Lalu and his enormous crate into the back of an autorickshaw, which involved me hanging half my body out the side and holding Lalu as tightly as possible while he went haywire over the smells. I asked two colleagues to come with us to help, and we arrived at the station just as the train was arriving and proceeded to run up and down the track trying to find our car - it always seems to be in a different place! We jumped on board, only to discover that the crate wouldn't fit inside the interior doors - oops! Thankfully I had received truly excellent advice and travelled first class (!), so we had an entire little cabin to ourselves, and Lalu could just run around in that while his crate was in the corridor. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been so productive as on that train - no distractions, few responsibilities - too bad it'll never happen again. Lalu seemed to like the train, but he was really frustrated that I wouldn't let him run through the corridor with the little kids playing.

We arrived at the Delhi railway station, and I'm glad it wasn't my first time because it's truly an assault on the senses. Lalu of course popped a squat immediately upon stepping off the train, and I tried to pretend that I didn't notice (I didn't feel too bad since men pee on the platform constantly, in full view). I had to haggle for a few minutes to hire a van (भाई, पांच सौ पचास?!)  and then jetted off to the JPAL Guest House and office, where Lalu chilled for two days before his flight to Newark. By "chilled," I mean: 1) got loose outside the building and ran around until the security guard yelled at me; 2) terrified some Data Entry Operators by sprinting at them and jumping up for a hug; and 3) offended the Executive Director's really sweet Labrador and crashed our plans for a puppy play date.  Basically, no one in the Delhi office believes me that he's ordinarily a very sweet dog, and Jeff Weaver and I were the only ones genuinely sad he was leaving.

I was instructed by the Continental PetSafe representative to come to the airport 8 hours before his flight, and being neurotic I came an extra half hour early, and was glad that I did because I proceeded to spend the next three hours shuttling between a dozen different customs/airline offices, filling out different forms, getting different stamps and signatures, etc. I am completely inured to this process now (thank you, government officials, for training me in this rather specialized form of patience). Toward the beginning, they told me that they needed to take Lalu away to get "tests," which of course made me nervous as heck, but two hours later, I was taken out to my car to find that the driver had been babysitting him the whole time!

And of course Lalu was delightfully sweet except when it mattered, e.g. when the Continental representative had to inspect him and he decided right then to roll around on the spectacularly dirty floor of the Customs warehouse and refuse to get up. But eventually I had to coax/shove him into his crate and say goodbye. No tears or anything, but he and I didn't break eye contact for at least two straight minutes as they wheeled him slowly through security.

And then Jeff and I compulsively checked his online tracking website for the next 24 hours, and boy are we glad we did because they shifted his flight from Newark to Tampa four hours earlier without notifying us, so Jeff was able to call his mom, who met Lalu at the airport. We immediately called her and she reassured us both that he was fine - and of course Jeff went all adorably paranoid ("How do we know he's our dog? Can she send us a photo?"), but we've chilled out a bit now and I'm just counting the days until August when I get to see him again!